


Windows to the Soul

by RobotWendigo



Series: Human [3]
Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: AND THERE WAS ONLY ONE BED!, Accidental Voyeurism, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Begging, Blood, Body Worship, Choking, Coming Out, Coming Untouched, Cuddling, Deviates From Canon, Eye Trauma, Game: Resident Evil 2 Remake (2019), Gore, Hand Jobs, Hormones Behave Like Pheromones, Internalized Homophobia, Kissing, M/M, Masturbation, Mates, Oral Sex, Porn With Plot, Possessive Behavior, Protectiveness, Rough Sex, Scent Kink, Size Difference, Teratophilia, Weapons, Wet Dream, Zombies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:08:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 69,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28534173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobotWendigo/pseuds/RobotWendigo
Summary: Leon should have listened when he was told to stay away from Raccoon City. Now here he is in the Raccoon Police Department fighting for survival against horrible monsters beyond the imagination. Yet there is one monster here, perhaps the most intimidating of them all, that has captured his curiosities in a strange way. Perhaps it is its sheer power, perhaps it is its oddly human mannerisms, or perhaps it is those empty eyes, windows to a seemingly unreadable soul. Whatever it is, he isn’t quite willing to accept the true nature of his intrigue.
Relationships: Leon S. Kennedy/Mr. X | Tyrant T-00
Series: Human [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1797358
Comments: 139
Kudos: 321





	1. Intrigue

**Author's Note:**

> Leon and X is my OTP and nobody can stop me. Well, okay, I have multiple OTP’s, and this is just one of them. But nobody can stop me from that either!
> 
> You don’t need to read the rest of the series to understand this, so if you’re just here for the Leon and X stuff, that’s all good.
> 
> I plan to update every Sunday. My time zone is EST/EDT, so keep that in mind! It might be more like every Monday wherever you are.

Leon Scott Kennedy had several ideas of what his first day as an officer for the Raccoon Police Department might be like, but not a single one of those expectations could have prepared him for the chaos he was about to walk into.

It hadn’t seemed so bad at first. The few zombies traipsing around the gas station had been easy enough to deal with, and that’s where he had met that woman, Claire Redfield. But once the two actually reached the city itself, the extent of the calamity became all too evident. The streets were swarming with undead civilians, and there wasn’t a single surviving soul in sight, not to mention nearly everything was broken and/or on fire. As if that hadn’t been bad enough, he and Claire were separated, forcing him to trek to the RPD on his own.

The RPD was even worse. All his fellow police officers, people who should have been his coworkers, people who could have been his _friends_ , were now nothing more than mindless monsters roaming the dark halls. Leon couldn’t even manage to save the few people who did last long enough to meet him. His stomach lurches every time he thinks back to Marvin and the look in the lieutenant’s eyes, the look of a man who has lost all hope of survival, a man who knows it is too late. He shudders every time he thinks back to Elliot, the blood splattering out from under the door as the man screamed in agony, his intestines spilling across the ground-

_BANG!_

Leon fires his gun at a zombie that just emerged from a side hall, just barely knocking it back before it has the chance to take a bite out of his neck. He shoots it a few more times in the head until it collapses, then quickly proceeds down the hall in case it decides to wake back up or more zombies are drawn to the sounds of the gunshots. Nothing around here ever stays dead, Leon has learned, and he can’t let himself get so distracted by his thoughts again.

Still, it’s difficult to _not_ get lost in thought about everything he has encountered over the last few hours. There is something bigger than he could possibly understand going on here, that much is clear. His run-ins with that FBI agent Ada are enough to account for that, her vague words ringing in his head from time to time. And there aren’t just zombies running around this place. There are monsters. Real monsters. Skinless quadrupeds with long, razor-like tongues. A man who hardly looks like a man anymore, his head lolled to the side like a broken appendage, his entire right shoulder and arm overgrown into a hideous, pulsating tumor. Whatever the hell killed that prisoner Ben, some horrendous monster powerful enough to punch through a concrete wall and crush the man’s skull in a single leather-dressed fist.

This place is a nightmare incarnate, and if there are any answers to be found in his escape, then Leon’s determined to do whatever it takes to find them.

Of course, escaping can’t be simple either. All Leon needs is that keycard from Ben’s corpse, and freedom is as simple as an open parking garage gate. But he can’t open the prison cells, and now he’s on a quest to find some missing electronic components, get the damn door open, and retrieve his key out of this hellscape.

Leon isn’t sure if he is incredibly skilled or just incredibly lucky. He hasn’t sustained any major injuries from any of the horrors he’s encountered, just a few knicks and bruises here and there. Sure, he’s a good aim, and he’s quick on his feet. But these monsters are quicker. Stronger. Seemingly impervious to bullets to an incredibly frustrating degree. Especially those tongued monsters; lickers, as he’s settled on calling them.

Leon stops to reload his gun before turning the corner, then stops dead in his tracks. He completely forgot that this hallway is blocked by the remains of the helicopter that crashed into the side of the building, the massive aerial vehicle much too heavy for him to move aside. With a frustrated sigh, Leon starts to turn around to find another way past the obstacle.

The helicopter creaks, and Leon freezes, turning back to stare at the source of the noise. Before Leon can even process what is happening, the helicopter is being shoved to the side like it’s made of Styrofoam.

“Jesus…” Leon mutters, his feet glued to the ground, his eyes wide as he takes in whatever the hell was strong enough to lift a goddamn helicopter with one hand.

Before Leon stands a man that he can only guess is over seven feet tall. It’s skin is oddly textured and gray, its face emotionless, its body towering over the surroundings with massive musculature, its form clothed in black leather and buckled straps, its head topped by a hat that would be humorously inappropriate if not for the terrifying appearance of literally everything beneath it. Leon’s gaze drifts down to the monster’s massive fist clenched at its side, the hand clad with a leather glove, and a horrified realization washes over him.

This is the thing that punched through the wall and killed Ben.

And suddenly, the hulking monstrosity is making a beeline toward him with murderous intent in its eyes.

“Jesus Christ!” Leon shouts as he turns on his heels to put some distance between himself and his newfound pursuer. His mind reels as he hears the monster following him, its heavy footfall maintaining an uncomfortable closeness. _What is that thing!? Is it human!? Is every goddamn monster here human!? Where is this shit even coming from!? Why does everything here have to be so intent on slaughtering me!?_

Leon turns to look over his shoulder just in time to see a fist pummeling toward him with immense power, and he barely ducks out of the way of the attack. Surely taking that hit would have broken his ribs or caved in his cranium. He raises his gun while the monster recovers from its misplaced inertia, shooting at it in desperation. Yet it doesn’t yield. It doesn’t even flinch. It simply turns back around and cracks its neck with an irritated huff, a gesture that sends a rippling chill through Leon’s body.

Leon turns and books it down the hallway in the direction he originally intended, passing the helicopter that has now been conveniently moved out of his path. The hall practically shakes from the thudding footsteps of the hulking figure as it chases after Leon. The rookie officer turns a corner and just barely dodges a lurking zombie. As he continues down the hall he hears a sickening splat, and he glances over his shoulder to find that the giant monster has nonchalantly shoved the zombie aside so hard that its head splattered against the wall.

There’s no doubt in Leon’s mind that he’ll die the instant that thing catches him, what with it being capable of dispatching people so brutally _without even trying_. Something tells Leon that fighting the thing will be nothing more than a waste of bullets. At least the lickers have exposed brains, at least that horrifically mutated man had that eye on his shoulder and a relatively normal lower body, obvious indicators of human weakness, targets to shoot at. At least those monsters attacked with nothing more than reckless abandon, completely numbed to any previous cognitive capacity. This thing is none of that. This thing is symmetrical and all-encompassing in its damage-resistant form, calculating in all its movements. It possesses a certain determination in its demeanor, a certain intelligence, and that is more terrifying than any mindless animal could possibly be. No, fighting is not an option right now. The only hope Leon has to get out of this alive is to lose the thing in the winding halls of the RPD, maybe even lose it in a room.

Leon continues to dodge around zombies only for them to immediately get tossed aside effortlessly, some more fatally than others. He turns another corner and immediately ducks into the closest room, hoping that the monster can’t see the maneuver. He closes and locks the door as quietly as he can. In the panic of the moment, he proceeds to brace himself against one of the bookshelves and push it over to barricade the door, and the large piece of furniture crashes down loudly, completely defeating the original idea of trying to be quiet. Realizing his mistake, Leon rushes back to the far wall, preparing himself to juke around the monster if it manages to get into the room.

_SLAM!_

The door splinters into hundreds of pieces as a massive fist punches through. The bookshelf slides across the entire length of the room from the strength of a single kick, and Leon has to jump out of the way to avoid being struck in the shins. So much for hiding and waiting it out.

“This is insane…” Leon mutters to himself as the monster steps into the room, its body so tall that it has to duck down just to get through the doorway. It sets its stare on Leon before it stomps toward him, fists clenched threateningly at its sides. Leon leaps over the bookshelf and barely manages to duck under another punch, giving him a chance to escape the room and continue down the hall.

The monster doesn’t seem to be in too much of a hurry, simply stalking behind Leon with a steady walk, but it still manages to keep pace with him thanks to just how long its strides are. Unfortunately, Leon severely underestimates just how fast that seemingly casual pace is. He hears another loud huff behind him just as the monster’s fist makes contact with his shoulder blade, sending him flying into the far wall.

Leon scrambles to his feet with a groan, his entire back screaming in pain. He’s surprised that didn’t break his spine. Still, the incredibly powerful punch was able to disorient him just long enough for the perpetrator to gain the upper hand. Before Leon has any chance to counter, the monster has him cornered against the wall, an open palm stretching out toward him.

“No!” Leon looks for a way out, but his attacker is too quick. Thick fingers find their way around his neck, and Leon feels the ground depart from his feet as he is lifted into the air, his windpipe squeezed in the monster’s tight grasp. He chokes for air, his throat and lungs burning at the agonizing pressure, and he finds himself staring right into the monster’s eyes. They’re unlike any eyes Leon has ever seen before. They seem hazy, distant, the irises dark, the pupils almost reflective, silvery.

For a reason that probably has something to do with oxygen deprivation, Leon finds them strangely alluring.

It suddenly occurs to Leon that he still has a gun in his hand. He shoots blindly at the monster’s head, and after a few well-placed shots, it releases him with a pained grunt. Leon falls to the ground, his head spinning, his chest aching, but he doesn’t have any time to waste recovering or wondering how the hell he isn’t nothing more than a puddle of blood and viscera yet. Perhaps Leon inadvertently shot some hidden weak spot, because for some reason or other the monster staggers for a few moments, clutching its face in its hands with a droning groan. Leon takes advantage of the brief hesitation to spring back to his feet and make a break for it.

He can hardly run, his capacity to hold air in his lungs temporarily compromised by the fact that he almost had his trachea crushed. Still, he does everything in his power to get as far away from the threat as possible. He tries to pick up his pace as the pain in his airways gradually fades from his perception, darting around corners and into hallways and down staircases that wouldn’t seem logical to take under any other circumstances in an attempt to throw the monster off his tail. He eventually manages to achieve a reasonable speed, and the heavy footfall starts to fade into the distance. Leon decides to take another chance with his previously failed strategy, ducking into a room and squeezing himself into the corner between two of the bookshelves.

The footsteps grow closer to the room, the thunderous sound increasing in volume until it is just outside the door. Leon holds his breath, as if the monster might hear even the tiniest hint of his presence. Relief overwhelms his entire being as the footsteps continue past the room and down the hall, the monster completely unaware of its prey’s true location.

Even once silence has befallen the RPD once again, Leon doesn’t move on for several minutes longer, simply standing motionlessly in the darkness as his heart threatens to beat straight out of his chest. Once his adrenaline rush has subsided, he dares himself to emerge from his hiding place and push onward. After a brief examination of the room through which he finds nothing useful, he heads back toward the room’s exit.

Leon creaks open the door and peeks out into the hallway, checking to make sure the coast is clear. When he’s certain there isn’t anybody – or anything, rather – around to notice him, he steps out of the room with his gun poised readily at his side. That colossal thing could be anywhere by now, and the last thing he wants to do is run into it again by accident, or worse, draw its attention right to him. He’ll have to be quieter from this point forward, avoiding firing his gun unless absolutely necessary.

* * *

Leon continues through the halls trying to make whatever progress he can for what feels like an eternity, all the while trying desperately to think of anything other than the inevitable mortality that surrounds him. There are fewer zombies now, for one reason or another. Perhaps he took them out already. Perhaps something else took them out instead, something seven and a half feet tall and clad in leather. He shakes away the thought.

God, he’s never felt this physically and mentally drained. What he wouldn’t give to just be able to lie down for a moment and sleep away the exhaustion. But even if there weren’t zombies everywhere that would likely kill him in his sleep, he still wouldn’t be able to bring himself to indulge in the luxury of relaxation and rest. He needs to find Claire, help her find her brother, and help them get the hell out of here. He needs to find out what’s really going on, what Ada isn’t telling him, what started this mess in the first place. Sleep can wait.

That doesn’t change the fact that he feels like he’s treading through wet cement with every step, his head pounding with a throbbing headache, his muscles aching from all the running and shooting and dodging and throwing zombies off of his person when they succeed in getting too close and grabbing ahold of him. He can’t wait to get out of here.

Part of Leon ponders where he will even go if he manages to get out of this place alive. He came here to help people, but it seems like there’s nobody left to help aside from Claire, and he has no idea where she is or if she’s even still alive. Is he really supposed to just drive back home to his old apartment and move on like none of this ever happened? Get a job with some other police department in some other city that isn’t completely overrun by zombies and mutant abominations? How does he know this apocalypse is even contained to the city? Surely it isn’t impossible that an infected individual escaped the borders of the municipality. This could be the end of the entire state, the entire country, the continent, even human civilization as a whole.

To think he broke up with his girlfriend over all this.

Leon frowns as he thinks back to that painfully recent falling out. There’s no doubt that he feels bad. His obsession with joining the RPD to help investigate the string of murders in Arklay County put a strain on the relationship from the start. He should have been more attentive, more emotionally open. Now there’s one more broken heart out there because of him.

Strangely enough, Leon feels worse for his ex than he does for himself. In fact, he doesn’t really feel bad for himself at all. This isn’t his first breakup, and he doubts it will be his last considering that he’s only twenty-one, but simple familiarity isn’t the reason why he feels so numb to it all. It’s a matter of none of the relationships truly speaking to him. It’s not like he hasn’t _tried_ to care more. He’s certainly cared about all of his girlfriends to _some_ extent, but it was always to the extent that one might care about a friend, not a romantic partner. Breaking up always felt more like parting ways with a casual acquaintance than a shattering of the heart.

He hasn’t stopped trying, though. Certainly he’ll find the right person if he just keeps trying. But none of them ever click. None of them ever make his heart beat a little faster, his blood run a little hotter. It’s almost concerning, and Leon has definitely entertained the thought that maybe it’s just never meant to be.

He’s entertained _other_ thoughts as well, but mostly in moments of weakness that he refuses to acknowledge.

Leon finds his mind drifting to all his near-death experiences so far. The semi-truck exploding just yards away from him replays in his head, the scene engulfed in fire and heat. His shoulder aches slightly as he recalls the licker that slammed him into a wall before he blew its brains apart. He envisions the drooling maw of the Doberman that attacked him in the parking garage, an attack that could have ended much differently had Ada not shown up and shot the crazed animal. He tries to comprehend whatever the hell was growing on that man, an amalgamation of eyes and flesh and sinew. Then, of course, there was his most recent encounter, that monster of impossible stature stalking him through the halls, death in its gaze.

Leon looks up at the ceiling when he hears the sound of heavy footsteps on the floor above. Speak of the devil. Hopefully it stays up there as long as he’s down here.

He thinks back to the monster of a man with greater contemplation. Leon wonders what it is, where it came from, what makes it so different from all the other monstrous creatures terrorizing the city. It certainly is different; Leon could tell that just by looking into its eyes. That gaze was piercing, almost beautiful in some strange way. There was definitely some deeper understanding behind that uncanny stare, something aware, something profoundly familiar that makes Leon uncomfortable in a way he doesn’t quite know how to describe, like windows into a human soul.

It’s strange, the vision Leon has in his head of the thing. For some reason his brain seems to want to emphasize the human aspects more than the monstrous ones. That haunting gaze, in particular, is burned into his mind, and he can’t help but wonder what was going on behind those silvery eyes. Every movement seemed so self-restrained and confident and carefully planned. This monster isn’t some stupid zombie, it’s smart. It took its time, never expressed frustration beyond a huff or two. The clothes were an interesting aspect as well. They weren’t ripped apart and bloodied like the clothes of all the other creatures running around. No, they were perfectly fitted to the monster’s body as if made specifically for it, as if the monster was never normal to start with.

Leon also can’t help but note that between the leather straps and the leather everything else, the outfit struck him as kind of kinky.

_Wait, no, that’s weird._

He subconsciously raises a hand to his neck and touches the tender bruises the monster’s vicious grasp left behind. The thing really was massive, pure muscle, pure power. Leon wonders what kind of terrifying physique is hidden beneath that trench coat, probably a chiseled musculature that would put him and all his fellow officers from the academy to shame. Probably put a powerlifter to shame too.

Leon is suddenly snapped back to reality by the scuttling of claws on the ceiling.

_SCREEEE!_

Leon reaches for his gun, but the licker has already leapt from the ceiling while he was distracted by his thoughts. The two bodies go crashing to the ground, and the gun goes flying out of Leon’s grasp. He feels an unbearable stinging as the mutant’s claws shred through his leg, leaving huge bleeding gashes in their wake.

“Shit!” Leon kicks at the licker to dislodge it from his body, but that only makes it angrier. Its tongue whips out of its gaping jaw and lashes at Leon, slicing a gash into the arm he holds up to protect his face. Free from the licker’s weight, Leon lunges for his gun, wrapping his finger around the trigger and aiming just as the licker lunges for him once again.

_BANG!_

The licker stumbles back with another screech before clambering up the wall to the ceiling.

_BANG!_

Leon takes aim again and fires, striking the licker right in the brain.

_BANG!_

It jumps from the ceiling to land on top of him again, claws poised to strike, but Leon hits it with another bullet square between where its eyes should be, and it collapses to the ground.

Leon doesn’t stick around for it to get back up. He pushes himself to his feet with a groan, his fresh wounds bloody and painful. He rushes down the hall and out of the licker’s proximity, wincing every time he puts weight on his damaged leg. He should know better than to get distracted like that. His thoughts are a clusterfuck right now.

Leon digs through his uniform in search of a first aid spray or a green herb to treat his wounds only to recall that he stashed them all in the S.T.A.R.S. office. He’d reasoned that a backup stash of supplies on the middle floor of the building would be the most accessible from any other location, but he failed to reason that a backup stash is only a backup stash if he also keeps a primary stash on his person. He’d allowed himself to get overconfident, figuring that he could avoid injury altogether and negate the need to carry supplies that would take up pocket space and weigh him down. He internally scolds himself for making such a stupid move. He’ll have to limp his way back to where he left everything before he can even think of making more progress.

_Thud. Thud. Thud._

“Shit,” Leon mutters to himself. It looks like all the noise managed to draw the attention of Mr. Stompy. At least it sounds like it’s coming from a few halls down. That should give Leon enough time to get out of the area, grab his stuff, and take refuge somewhere he can treat his wounds in relative peace. He doesn’t waste any time, staggering as quickly as he can despite his injuries toward the room containing all the supplies he so foolishly stored away earlier.

In some well-needed bout of luck, Leon manages to make it all the way to his destination without running into any more trouble, and the stomping fades down a completely different hallway. With a sigh of relief, he slips into the S.T.A.R.S. office and shuts the door behind him, then stands there for a moment just to take in the superficial feeling of safety in the temporary refuge. He pulls himself across the room to the place where he stashed everything, and thankfully all his stuff is still there. He digs around for the first aid spray and some gauze bandaging, as well as some green herbs for later. He knows better now than to go unprepared for injury again.

Leon steps back out of the room and across the hall to one of the side rooms, a smaller office that feels at least somewhat more secure thanks to its compact size and lockable door. This feels like a safe enough place to tend to himself unnoticed, although it seems there may have been some previous commotion here. Several of the filing cabinet drawers have been left open, and documents are scattered wildly across the floor as if someone just swept their arms across the surface of the desk. Still, if there was someone here before, they certainly aren’t here now.

Leon eventually settles on sitting on the floor behind the desk, hiding himself from the view of anyone who may open the door to peek in, just in case. He pushes the already-askew swivel chair aside, then settles down and leans back against the heavy furniture with a groan, his injuries still burning with every movement he makes. He sprays the liquid medication over the gash on his arm, wincing at the resulting sting, then wraps the wound with the gauze to keep it clean. Next is his leg, and now that he has sat down to examine it, he realizes just how bad it really is. He’s never been cut so deeply in his life, and his pants leg is soaked in blood. He sprays this wound as well, clenching his teeth to hold in a shout of pain, then wraps it with more bandages to stop the bleeding. The remaining gauze gets stuffed into one of his uniform pockets for later.

The realization suddenly hits that this is the first time he’s simply sat down since he got to this city, and it feels amazing just to take the weight off his feet. As much as he wishes he could stay like this, though, he knows he has to keep moving. He urges himself to stand, but his body simply stays put no matter how much the logical side of his brain yells at him to get up. He’s just so goddamn tired. Leon sighs and leans his head back against the side of the desk. He supposes it wouldn’t really hurt to just sit here for a few minutes, take a moment to calm down and clear his head.

He closes his eyes and forces his body to relax. Just a few minutes, and then he’ll be on his way again.

Just a few… minutes…

That’s… all…


	2. Lucidity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the longest thing I have ever written for anything ever and it's 100% goddamn _smut_.
> 
> I used to struggle to write 1k of smut and now I'm churning out 7.3k of smut with the efficiency of... something that is really efficient, I dunno, similes were never my thing. I'm not sure how to feel about that but I suppose I will consider it an accomplishment.

Leon isn’t sure how he found himself in this situation, but quite frankly, he doesn’t really care.

All he cares about right now is the feeling of the hands on his hips, impossibly massive hands pulling his body down into the most euphoric sensation he has ever experienced. A needy groan escapes his lips as the monster beneath him thrusts up into his body, pushing its equally monstrous cock deeper into him. His own hands roam across the leather-clad torso to feel the firm musculature hidden within, any feelings of fear he may have felt before in the monster’s presence completely wiped from his mind. His entire body trembles every time that cock thrusts back in, hitting his prostate, filling him more than should be humanly possible. He lets out another heady moan, and a few tears roll down his face at just how overwhelming all the sensations are. Nobody has ever been able to get him off like this.

_It feels so good._

“ _A-ah… fuck…_ ” he stammers as he stares up at the monster’s face, and it glares back with familiarly piercing eyes. Leon finds himself melting under their gaze, their beautiful silver hue filling his veins with an inescapable warmth and need. Everything is happening so fast, swirling around him in a whirlwind of unfamiliarly addictive feelings. “ _Please! Please…_ ” He can't even bring himself to verbalize what he is begging it for, for it to fill him with something _more_.

The expressionless gray face moves in closer, pressing thin lips to Leon’s own. Leon eagerly reciprocates the gesture, kissing back with a desperation unlike any he has ever expressed before. His hands find their way over the monster’s shoulders to pull that body closer, to feel its warmth, its unmatched strength, its raw power. Its thrusts grow faster, harder, needier.

“ _P-please!_ ” Leon practically sobs against its lips, wanting more than anything to feel himself being filled with the warm rush of his strange lover’s orgasm. Its thrusting becomes increasingly erratic, and Leon’s begging finally rewards him. With a low, inhuman groan, the monster spills into Leon’s tight hole with incredible force, sending the man’s mind into a spiraling elation of carnal pleasure, his own climax approaching fast.

_So close… I’m so… close… Please… Just let me…_

* * *

_GASP!_

Leon’s eyes shoot open as he inhales sharply, and he looks around in wild confusion. After taking a few seconds to catch his breath, he realizes that he is sitting on the floor behind the desk, his uniform soaked in a cold sweat. It’s silent, and nobody else is here. He must have fallen asleep against his better judgement, and he wants to smack himself for being so careless. What if something had found him?

He’s also throbbing between his legs, and he suddenly remembers the dream he just woke up from so abruptly. He wishes he didn’t.

_Jesus Christ…_

Leon rubs at his eyes with a quiet hiss of disdain, trying desperately to pay no mind to just how heated he feels. There’s no way… There’s no way he actually just dreamed about _that_. How sick does he have to be to be having subconscious sexual fantasies about that… _thing_!? Sure, he may have spent a little time contemplating the sheer kinkiness of the thing, but to actually have a goddamn wet dream about it? He isn’t kinky like that, right? He claws at his hair angrily as the sounds of the fictional scene reverberate through his mind, his own voice _begging_ to be fucked into oblivion, _begging_ to be allowed to orgasm.

He just _had_ to go get attacked by a monster that would invariably be his type should he ever embrace his more unwanted impulses, huge and masculine and powerful. And that encounter just _had_ to be some cat-and-mouse chase of leather and asphyxiation that was way more kinky than it had any right to be. His mind drifts back to the feeling of those lips against his own, the feeling of being so full, so vulnerable, so warm, the satisfaction and ecstasy of-

_God, snap out of it Leon! What the fuck is wrong with you!? That thing wants to fucking murder you, not take you out to dinner and dick you down!_

He’s normally so good at keeping these types of impulses under control, pushing them back down into the deepest depths of his subconscious where he can pretend they don’t exist. Why is _Sir Stomps-a-Lot_ suddenly the thing to make him falter so hard? Is it simply the thing’s hyperbolic masculinity? Is it because of how stressful everything is right now?

Leon runs his hands over his face with a groan of embarrassed frustration. He feels dirty, gross, ashamed. Not only is he sitting here having wet dreams about getting fucked in the ass, he’s sitting here having wet dreams about getting fucked in the ass by a terrifying abomination that could literally crush his skull like a melon. It’s sick. Disgusting. Warped.

Why does it have to turn him on so much?

Leon scowls down at the bulge in his pants, his arousal from the dream refusing to die down. His subconscious could have at least let him finish before waking him up so suddenly. Now he’s hot and horny and unsatisfied and, most importantly, distracted. If he tries to walk out of here like this, there’s no telling how easily something will catch him off guard and end him. No, he needs to take care of this first. He’ll jerk himself off, clear his head, and then get the fuck out of here and forget this whole ordeal ever happened. Besides, he’s already so worked up, he’ll probably be done in just a few minutes tops. No big deal.

His hands make quick work of his belt and the zipper of his fly so that they can free his member from the confines of his pants. He leans his head back against the desk with a deep exhale as he wraps his fingers around the tip, precum already dripping down the glans. He already feels so close to coming, as if just picking up where the dream left off.

_No, don’t think about the dream. Think about your ex or something._

Leon furrows his brow as his hand strokes his erection, finding it difficult to focus on his own pleasure while also trying to forget the thing that got him aroused to this point in the first place. Every time he feels himself about to topple over the edge, his brain starts thinking of that monster again, and the panic of trying to suppress it just puts him right back where he started. He groans with frustration, his loins aching for release but his conscious refusing to give it to him. His pulse is pounding in his head, his bloodstream saturated with hormones. At this rate, this is going to take a little longer than a few minutes.

_Come on Leon! Why can’t you just-_

_THUMP!_

Leon chokes out a cry of surprise as the sturdy support of the desk behind him suddenly gives way to nothing, and he falls flat onto his back. He stares ceiling-ward and sees the desk literally hovering in the air above him before being thrown to the side of the room with a loud thud, and Leon knows there is only one thing in this god-forsaken hellhole that could lift a huge desk like that and toss it away like a crumpled piece of paper.

Two silver eyes stare down at him from above, and in that brief stillness, Leon experiences a confusing rush of both terror and arousal through every fiber of his being. He scrambles up into a sitting position and scoots back on his ass in panic. He clumsily attempts to push himself off the ground to make a run for it, but his arms and legs suddenly feel like gelatin. He feels like a half-squashed roach skittering helplessly across the floor.

The titan takes a step toward Leon, and he immediately draws his gun and shoots at its face, hoping to hit whatever weak spot he managed to hit last time. It turns out that gelatin arms are not optimal for aiming, and all he manages to do is shoot off the thing’s hat, which just seems to piss it off. He takes aim to shoot again, but the monster’s hand suddenly swipes forward, knocking the gun from his grasp and sending the weapon sliding across the floor, hopelessly out of reach.

The monster stoops down to one knee in order to better reach Leon, and soon that powerful hand is wrapped around the smaller man’s neck once more. Leon’s own hands reach up to claw at the monster’s grasp, desperately trying and failing to free himself from the vice grip. The burning in his lungs returns as he slowly starts to run out of oxygen, and his mind spins trying to figure out how this happened. He must have been so involved with his failing masturbation session that he didn’t even notice the footsteps outside, the locked door being forced open. His vision starts to go dark at the edges as his chest spasms for air.

What a humiliating way to die, dick out and all, struggling to not be even further aroused by the act of being choked to death by something clad entirely in the kinkiest outfit he’s ever seen.

Leon braces himself to lose consciousness, but he instead finds his lungs somehow gasping in another stinging breath of air. He is acutely aware that the monster’s fingers are still wrapped around his neck. But its grip is significantly less strangling now, as if intending to simply hold him in place and nothing more. Leon squirms slightly in an attempt to get away only for that grip to tighten once again, but only for a few seconds.

Leon dares himself to look at the monster’s face and try to figure out what, exactly, it is planning. It could have easily killed him by now, so why is it hesitating? It’s difficult to deduce any motivation from the monster’s blank expression, but Leon once again finds himself drawn to those eyes. There actually seems to be a hint of some human emotion in there, albeit warped and nearly unreadable.

Nearly. But not entirely.

Leon narrows his eyes at the subtle look of _confusion_ in the monster’s gaze, as if it suddenly has no idea what Leon even is. “What?” he whispers sharply, his voice hoarse from being choked twice now. “What are you waiting for? Are you going to kill me or not?”

The monster cocks its head to the side like a curious dog, and Leon notices the subtle flaring of its nostrils. Suddenly, it leans forward and shoves its nose into Leon’s hair, inhaling deeply, taking in his scent. It stays there for a while, then moves down to Leon’s jawline. It presses its nose beneath Leon’s ear, breathing in once more, this time with a contemplative grumble.

Leon shudders at the sound. God, this is so sensual, the hot breath against his sensitive skin, the vibrations from the monster’s chest, the fingers around his throat. He tries not to think too hard about why this is happening, but he has no control of his thoughts at this point. Surely… surely it can’t smell his hormones, broadcasting his arousal like animalistic pheromones? Surely it doesn’t realize just how turned on he is?

Surely it doesn’t have those… instincts?

The hold on Leon’s neck suddenly disappears only to be replaced by a firm hold on both his arms. The monster pulls back to examine Leon in his entirety, that look of confusion still prevalent in its eyes but accompanied by a newfound curiosity. Its gaze eventually stops between his legs, staring at his still fully-erect cock. One of the hands shifts to Leon’s chest to push his body firmly against the wall while the other moves down to hold him at the waist, keeping his body steady for closer examination. Leon holds his breath as the monster leans in closer to Leon’s erection, its nostrils flaring once more as it takes in the scent of his sexual need. The monster cocks its head to the side again with a more intense look of confused interest.

It occurs to Leon that yes, this monster can definitely smell his arousal, and that realization is horrifying. Definitely not anything else, he tells himself. Just horrifying. Still, at least the monster is too busy investigating the novelty of the situation to bother killing him yet. The thing can express curiosity. Yet another uncomfortably human attribute.

Leon watches as the look in the giant’s eyes changes once again, shifting from curious confusion back to blank bloodlust. Then, just as suddenly as Leon found himself in this predicament, his body is being released from its hold. The monster stands back up, turns away, and approaches the desk that was previously tossed aside, and Leon watches with confusion as it lifts the massive piece of furniture with no effort at all. It doesn’t take long for Leon to regret not taking advantage of those few seconds of distraction to make a run for it, as the monster throws the desk down in front of the office door, effectively blocking Leon’s only exit from the room. It strides back over to Leon’s discarded gun and picks it up, crushing the weapon in its fist.

Leon winces as the crushed handgun is dropped uncaringly back to the floor. Rest in peace, Matilda.

To Leon’s even greater confusion, the monster doesn’t turn its attention back to him. It instead starts to pace the room, scanning it, smelling it, seemingly tearing it apart as it knocks over bookshelves and filing cabinets, clearly searching for something. What is it doing?

 _Oh. Oh my god._ Leon runs his fingers through his hair, unsure if this is even happening right now. Yes, the thing could definitely smell his arousal, but it must have come to the erroneous conclusion that it interrupted Leon copulating with someone, and that someone must be hiding somewhere else in the room, more prey that needs to be found and eliminated, more prey that cannot be allowed to escape. He should have known better than to assume it was interested in him like that. No, it was simply assessing the situation, optimizing its murderous intentions.

He tries to convince himself that he isn’t disappointed.

Leon isn’t sure what to do. There’s no way he can move the heavy desk aside and escape without the monster noticing first, even with how focused it is on searching a room that doesn’t actually have any good hiding places. Even if he were to escape, he is now without a handgun. Anything could kill him out there much more easily now. He supposes he could wait out the inevitable moment that the monster will realize that no, there is nobody else in the room, at which point he will most likely be promptly eviscerated. Or he could straight-up tell the thing that this is all a big misunderstanding and there is nobody else here, at which point he will also most likely be promptly eviscerated. Either way, he’s most likely going to be promptly eviscerated.

Leon takes a deep breath. There’s nothing else he can do at this point. Might as well get it over with.

“There’s nobody else in here.”

The monster pauses its search and turns to look at Leon, and the man immediately finds himself fixated on that gaze that is simultaneously so human and so inhuman, a gaze that now looks incredibly mad. Leon’s heart drops as the monster strides back over to him, kneeling down to glare into Leon’s face, its complexion blank aside from the cruel fury in its eyes. A threatening growl reverberates through the monster’s throat, as if accusing Leon of bluffing, threatening him into revealing wherever he is hiding his nonexistent mate.

Leon tries to steady his breath that suddenly feels much too difficult to control, that guttural sound from the monster’s throat sending him reeling. He isn’t sure why he thinks speaking to the thing is going to accomplish anything. He doesn’t even know if it understands English. Still, it isn’t like he has any better options right now. “Look, you aren’t going to find anything. I’m obviously alone.” He swallows a lump in his throat. “You might as well just kill me and get it over with.”

This only seems to make the monster angrier. A massive hand quickly finds its way back to Leon’s throat, restricting his access to air just enough to be painful. Leon bites his lip, trying to focus on the sudden increase in the need for oxygen and not the sudden increase in the need for sexual stimulation brought about by being choked for the third time tonight. The monster huffs in irritation, clearly not buying anything Leon has to say, determined to find this second human target that is so well hidden.

The monster leans down to reaffirm its suspicions. It forces a huff of air through its nostrils, perhaps trying to clear its palate to better analyze the potential presence of a female’s hormones left behind on Leon’s person, and Leon distinctly feels the heat of that breath against his painfully neglected cock. His response is immediate and instinctual, a pathetic whine that slips through his lips before he can stop himself, his body trembling slightly as he suppresses a buck of the hips. The pad of the monster’s thumb presses harder against his throat in anticipation of the human lashing out, but Leon simply goes limp at the erotic pressure, the blood rushing to his face in humiliation at his own weakness.

Leon should be terrified right now. Why does this feel so good? His hand did absolutely nothing, and instead he’s getting off on being strangled to death and inadvertently breathed on. Is it because of who is administering those sensations? Or _what_ is administering those sensations, rather? He’s going to die. He is absolutely, one-hundred percent going to die. This monster will accept that he isn’t hiding anyone here sooner rather than later, and then he’s going to die, and all he can feel about it is horny. He has to be stronger than that, right? He can’t actually… This doesn’t… This can’t… Why would…

It is at this point that Leon comes to the conclusion that he’s still dreaming.

He has had dreams-within-dreams several times in the past, and there’s simply no way this would be happening otherwise. Why would this monster even bother to investigate the smell of its prey’s hormones? Why wouldn’t it have just killed him from the get-go? As for himself, surely he would have more control over his impulses in real life, be sane enough to not be so distracted by wanting to be fucked by something that should never in a million years fuck anybody. Seriously, this entire predicament is ridiculous. Ludicrous. Insane. Only plausible as the product of a wet dream. Leon won’t admit how much he wants this to continue to the end, only how much he wants to wake up, wants this to be over, wants to forget that this weird sexual fixation with an inhuman abomination ever happened.

He clenches his eyes shut and begins trying to wake himself up, but he pauses. If he wakes up all hot and bothered like this without the needed gratification, he’s going to wind up in real life just like he wound up in this dream, forced to masturbate and make himself vulnerable only to find himself unable to climax because of his stupid personal convictions. But he can’t get himself off with this monster here. Well, he can. In fact, it would definitely help a lot. But he doesn’t want to let himself succumb to that disgusting desire.

Then again… Can he really be held accountable for the content of his dreams? Just because he’s aware he’s dreaming doesn’t necessarily make this lucidity. If he was truly lucid, he would have the power to poof this monster away, or turn it into a hot girl, or just make himself come instantly and get it over with. But he can’t do that, which means he isn’t lucid, which means it doesn’t really mean that he wants this if he just rides out the storm to get what he needs. The only way he’s going to wake up in a survival-ready state is if he comes right here, right now.

Leon sighs. _Survival is more important than dignity. Survival is more important than dignity. Survival is more important than dignity._

Leon lifts a shaking hand, and the increased pressure at his throat returns, the monster once again preparing for its human prey to defend itself. Those piercing eyes simply stare as Leon’s hand instead makes its way to his crotch, wrapping around his cock with a blatant lack of restraint. As Leon begins stroking himself once again, he lets out a low moan, focusing on the feeling of the hand tightly grasping his neck, the sheer strength, the disconcertingly human warmth. Already he feels like he’s getting somewhere he wasn’t before, and as much as he really hates that, he also really needs it.

The monster flares its nostrils again at the flux of returning hormones, the determined and murderous look in its eyes once again giving way to utter confusion. Leon can’t blame it. There is clearly no evidence of any other human’s recent presence in the room, female or otherwise. Yet here he is releasing even more of those hormones, tantalizing signals of sexual receptibility. It clearly has no prior concept of masturbation.

Leon whimpers again at the feeling of the monster’s hot breath returning to his face, the air pumping in and out of its lungs in an attempt to take in more scents and hopefully grasp why this human is so aroused by nothing at all. A small smirk sneaks onto Leon’s face, his mind ever-so-slightly humored that this thing has no idea that _it_ is the cause of such ministrations. He starts to feel his mind slipping into a haze just like his previous dream, all restraint and inhibition melting away under the heat of intense desire. The nagging thought of how wrong this is still peeks through the pleasure every now and then, but it is quickly quashed every single time before Leon has any chance to latch onto it.

Another quiet moan of satisfaction slips through Leon’s heated breaths when the monster presses its nose back into Leon’s hair, inhaling deeply. Leon can feel the grip around his neck loosen ever so slightly, and the hand is slowly withdrawn, drifting back down to Leon’s chest to restrain him against the wall. With Leon’s neck now exposed, the monster skirts Leon’s throat with its nose. Humans aren’t exactly designed to detect each other’s hormones, and Leon wonders what he could possibly smell like to something that can detect such things, if it is a good smell, a sweet smell even. Not that it matters, he reminds himself. This thing isn’t actually having any sensual experience; it is simply a projection of his subconscious, a means by which his dream-self hopes to finally attain an end.

The monster’s face continues to hover across Leon’s neck, gracing his sensitive skin with hot puffs of expelled breath. It eventually presses its face against Leon’s skin with what is unmistakably a satisfied purr, and Leon feels a spike in euphoria that is almost enough to send him over the edge. He supposes that answers the question of whether or not his hormones smell good to this thing. Unable to control himself, Leon brings a hand to the broad, leather-clad shoulder with a low groan, and the monster presses even further into Leon’s neck with an even more powerful purr that sends vibrations through Leon’s entire being.

Before Leon knows it, he’s lost all remaining control of himself. His mind is lost in the realization of just how incredible this thing is, whatever it may be. It is so self-contradictory, so human and intelligent yet so animalistic and instinctual all at once, and something about that terrifying strangeness is captivating to an extent that is impossible to escape. Its destructive capacity, its stiff and self-restrained movements, its calculations, its resilience; it is like a weapon incarnate, a device of death in vaguely human form. And the fact that Leon is somehow pleasing to such an imposing presence, even through something as simple as his scent, makes him feel like he’s reaching into a place that was never meant to be reached, drawing out something that was never meant to be uncovered. In this moment he doesn’t care about stigma, he just cares about the godlike thing pinning him against the wall while he shamelessly pleasures himself.

The monster pulls back from Leon’s neck, and Leon stares into its eyes that are still so heavy with confusion, a lack of understanding yet a desire to know. Leon’s hand slides from its shoulder down its arm, tracing the smooth leather, searching for a similarly leather-clad hand. Even if this isn’t real, even if this doesn’t mean anything, something in him wants it to understand what is happening, why this is happening.

“What?” he whispers headily, barely able to speak through the urgency of oncoming orgasm. “What don’t you understand about this?” He tugs at the leather sleeve of the coat until the monster lifts its arm with a grunt, and he quickly takes hold of its fingers. “Do you not understand what I’m doing?” Leon laughs incoherently, all rationality gone to delusion. “Why I’m doing this when nobody else is here?”

He guides the gloved hand down to his cock until the backs of its fingers are just barely brushing against his heated skin, and he practically convulses at how quickly he loses his last hint of self-control.

“You’re here, aren’t you?”

Leon can’t quite decipher the shift in the monster’s eyes in response to that gesture and accompanying utterance. The anger is once again completely superseded by the confusion and the curiosity from before, but there is something else there, perhaps a newfound uncertainty alongside an odd sense of frustration. That look is redirected from Leon’s face down to the cock in his hand, the confusion and frustration in its eyes growing even heavier. Leon almost feels sorry for the thing, seemingly unable to wrap its head around the existence of its own sex appeal, at least to someone whose brain is as messed up as his is right now.

Leon gasps sharply when the monster makes the unprecedented move of touching him of its own accord, the feeling of cool leather trailing over his member. He’s so close that he could probably finish in a few more strokes, yet he somehow overcomes the manic compulsion to continue and lets go. Almost immediately he is completely encompassed by that same cool leather, the monster having taken hold of him in a surprisingly gentle fist. Leon bucks his hips with a mindless groan, and the monster responds with an inquisitive huff.

The hand moves experimentally, applying pressure and friction, and both of Leon’s hands lash out to take the monster’s leather coat in a death grip. The monster tenses, preparing once more for Leon to fight back, but it relaxes again when Leon simply hisses out quiet encouragements.

“ _God, yes, that’s it…_ ”

Something seems to click in that moment as the monster’s gaze shifts yet again, the hint of frustrated uncertainty fading into a determined intrigue. It begins to mimic Leon’s previous movements, the leather slicked with precum as it glides up and down his shaft. Part of Leon wonders if maybe this is a hint of true lucidity, his conscious mind having willed this thing into performing an action that would have previously been completely unknown to it, an action that it derives no mutual benefit from. He doesn’t have much time to think about the implications of such lucidity, however, as his mind is quickly overwhelmed by an orgasm completely unlike any he has ever experienced regarding just how unrestrained it feels, the intensity undiluted by personal tenets of appropriate sexualities. He throws his head back with a euphoric moan upon finally attaining that sweet release. His cum spills across the leather glove that got him here as his fingers dig into the leather sleeves, grounding himself in the unreality of the dream so that he doesn’t accidentally wake up before the wave has passed.

As the pleasure starts to fade, as the last of his fluids spill, he falls both physically into a limp exhaustion and mentally into a dreaded post-nut clarity. Whether he is lucid or not, the fact that he chose to allow this to happen, the fact that he wanted it, enjoyed it, the fact that it worked at all, fills him with an all-encompassing shame. He can’t even come when he has actual legitimate real-world sex with his former girlfriend, yet he can do so to an unparalleled degree in some muted fantasy where he is hardly touched at all by a masculine horror. Between the conflicting mess of afterglow and disgrace, Leon hardly reacts when the pressure of the hand at his chest disappears and the monster leans back with a cautious trust of Leon’s submissive demeanor.

Leon watches the monster as it examines its hand, the white fluid glistening in the dull light as it turns it this way and that. He looks back into its eyes, and while they still echo an untold frustration, they also seem to look a little more lost, a little more distant. Leon’s eyes drift across the rest of its body, the leather trench coat, the silver buckles, the leather boots. He wonders if this thing has ever had a sexual experience before. It obviously understands what intercourse is, considering that it was able to postulate the presence of another human, albeit incorrectly, based on Leon’s hormones. But does it really understand? Has it never experienced that need, that pleasure, that relief? Surely it wouldn’t look so lost and frustrated if it had.

“Have you never…?”

The monster returns to alertness as it focuses its attention back on Leon. Leon waits for a huff, a grunt, something. All he gets is silence and an even greater look of lostness.

Leon purses his lips together as he shifts slightly. This may just be a fantastical manifestation of something, but it is still a manifestation of something real. These questions, these speculations, still translate to the real entity in the real world. It is a little frustrating that this specific speculation is so intriguing to him, especially when he knows it is based entirely in personal desires and not any form of survival strategy. Otherwise he’d also be sitting here contemplating the sex lives of the goddamn lickers. There’s no rational reason that he should give this monster’s sexual gratification a second thought.

But this is a dream, and he can do whatever he wants, and he’s already shamed himself this far, and he feels amazing underneath that shame, so there’s not really any incentive to stop.

With a sigh, Leon leans away from the wall and sits up straight, and the monster tenses slightly at the unprovoked movement. “I guess I owe you now, right?” It relaxes slightly again but maintains its attentive posture, the established trust clearly not enough to dismiss the possibility of a violent outburst from the human. After one final moment of hesitation, Leon reaches out with shaking hands toward the buckle at the waist holding the trench coat closed.

He freezes when the monster tenses again and emits a low, guttural growl. Still, it doesn’t grab him or move away, and it is clear that some progress has already been made. Leon waits for the growling to fade, projecting a look of awareness toward its eyes, awareness of his own comparative fragility, his own vulnerability, awareness that any wrong move is going to result in him being a splatter of blood on the wall.

When the room has fallen once again into silence, Leon reaches the rest of the way, his eyes widening in surprise when his fingers touch the cold metal of the buckle. He hadn’t expected to get this far. He’d expected the monster to lash out and annihilate him the moment he touched it, throwing him violently from his state of sleep. Instead it simply stares at him, its expression cold and analytical, perhaps questioning of his intentions but willing to allow things to proceed for now.

Through another burst of confidence, Leon’s hands loosen the leather strap. Maintaining slow movements so as not to trigger any sudden reactions, he steadily pulls the coat back to access the underlying pants. They are also made of leather, and Leon ponders how uncomfortable that must be. But that isn’t what is most important.

What is most important is that this thing is aroused, if the inhumanly large bulge in its pants is anything to go by, and it seems lost as to what to do about it, and that’s weirdly sad.

Leon’s hands hover over the buckles keeping the monster’s pants closed, and his eyes glance back up to the eyes of their wearer. They are still staring down at him with that same cold expression. It isn’t a welcoming expression at all, but the consistency is enough to convince Leon that he is safe to continue. He glances back down as he works at the buckle, and he realizes that every article of clothing is much more restraining that it has any right to be. Not too small, per say, even despite the monster’s massive stature. Just restraining, almost as if by design.

When the pants are finally opened, Leon nearly flinches at the anatomical anomaly that breaks free. He tells himself that he wasn’t prepared because he was distracted by his analysis of the thing’s clothes, but in all honesty, he wouldn’t have been prepared even if he’d tried to be. The gray cock in front of him is perfectly proportional to the size of its owner, what might be considered average in a world where everyone is over seven feet tall. But this isn’t a world where everyone is over seven feet tall, and what might seem average to this hulking monstrosity is terrifying to Leon and probably any other person in the history of humanity who has seen a penis. Even with the assistance of lube and dream logic, Leon has no idea how he managed to fit something so massive inside his body in his previous dream sequence. There isn’t a human being on earth that could take that, he’s sure of it.

Leon places a hesitant hand on the top of the shaft, slowly wrapping his fingers around the erection, and his fingertips don’t even touch because of the insane girth. The action earns him another low growl, but this one sounds a little more uncertain somehow. He glances back up into those intense eyes, and he sees the uncertainty reflected there as well.

“You’ve really never done anything like this, have you?” Leon murmurs, but he isn’t sure if he is asking the monster a question or just thinking out loud. “I’m just going to do what you did. It’s like a… like a common courtesy. Sex etiquette.”

He waits for a response, but he doesn’t get anything beyond the growl dying back down. Leon isn’t sure when his subconscious mind decided this thing doesn’t speak, but it did, and now his dream-form is kicking himself for it. With no verbal cues to tell him what to do, Leon cautiously proceeds anyway. His hand moves along the erection as the fingers of his other hand slowly move in to caress at its foreskin. It is a feature that he has never actually seen before, so he isn’t sure how his brain managed to come up with it or how close to reality that guess even is. After all, he's never touched a cock in his life aside from his own.

_God, don't think too hard about it._

He glances back up at the monster every few seconds, gauging its reaction. On a superficial level it appears unmoved by the situation at hand, its posture unchanging, its throat silent. But with Leon’s attunement to the thing’s eyes, he can almost see a growing shakiness in them, as though the only reason it appears so unimpressed is because it is using all of its strength to hold itself together, to not give in to the weakness.

Leon knows that feeling.

After a short while of stimulation, however, Leon is finally met with a different sound, something between a grumble and a purr. The monster leans forward, bringing a hand to rest against the wall behind Leon for support. Leon can see a subtle haze moving into those eyes as precum begins to drip onto his hands. The sight of the stone-faced giant slowly crumpling under the persistent stimulation fills Leon with a giddiness that he can’t even bother to protest, and he allows himself to get lost in it.

“You like that, big guy?” he whispers as he increases his pace with the lubricating slickness of the precum. The monster chokes out a strained groan in response, failing to hide its rapid loss of composure. “It feels good, doesn’t it?” Leon continues. “You can give in to it. You can let go. It will feel even better if you do.”

The monster groans again with a slight lurch, and this time it sounds much less restrained, much more primal. Leon jumps when its other hand moves to hold him at the hip, clawing needily at the source of this unfamiliar pleasure. It is completely unlike the feeling that hand had on his hips in his previous dream, a feeling of strength and control. This time it feels desperate and overwhelmed, that once monstrous strength faltering with each stroke and each caress. A low rumble vibrates in its chest as its breaths grow heavier, and a look of sheer concentration begins to permeate the blissful haze.

“That’s it,” Leon coaxes as he watches the entity that was once so threatening come undone at his fingertips. He almost feels awestruck at how intimidating it is even at its most vulnerable, its body hunched over, its expression dark and colorless, the sounds its makes impossibly deep, the hand at his hip bigger than his entire pelvic bone.

Another groan, another huff, and Leon is snapped out of his delusional admiration by a restrained thrust of the monster’s hips. He can feel its body staggering.

“Don’t hold it back,” Leon whispers, bracing himself for any more harsh movements. “Let it feel good. Let yourself have this.”

Leon is nearly knocked over by the less-restrained thrust that follows, the monster finally losing all control. It grinds into Leon’s grasp as it lets out several deep, rumbling sounds of desperation, the closeness of release evident in its eyes. After a few more strokes, the hand at his hip tightens painfully to the point that it would leave finger-shaped bruises in the real world. The monster lurches forward violently with the deepest groan Leon has ever heard as it orgasms, the sporadic streams of its seed more forceful and voluminous than should be humanly possible. Leon barely manages to slide out of the way, narrowly avoiding getting his uniform soaked in the white liquid. He continues his slowed caresses, drawing out what feels like an endless amount of cum, soaking his hands. It finally ends after what feels like whole minutes, leaving what is literally a large puddle of semen on the floor.

The two simply sit there in a shocked silence as the heat of the moment gradually settles. Leon tries to look into the monster’s eyes again, but it has closed them, leaving the rest of its expressionless face unreadable. He realizes just how hard his hands are shaking, and he quickly returns the softening cock to its restraining confines so that he can withdraw them. The monster doesn’t move at all, simply breathing heavily above him. He swears he can hear its heart beating from here. Eventually it removes the hand from his hip, clenching it into a fist and then unclenching it to stretch out its fingers over and over.

“Are… Are you okay?”

Leon isn’t sure why he even bothered to inquire such a thing. All things considered, there’s no reason he should be concerned about this thing’s well-being, and he knows he won’t get an answer anyway. Still, the sound of his voice breaking the silence is enough to spur the monster back to action. It abruptly opens its eyes, pushes itself back from the wall, and gets to its feet as its hands work to refasten the buckle of the trench coat, pulling the strap at its waist so tight that Leon winces. He watches as it strides over to one of the cabinets it knocked over and begins to rummage through the scattered files remaining in one of the drawers. After a few seconds it finds whatever it is looking for, and it strides back over to Leon, holding out its hand and dropping the object onto his lap.

It’s an old handgun. It must have found the weapon hidden away when it was tearing apart the room.

Leon clears his throat. “Th-thank you?” It feels like a peace offering, and part of Leon actually wishes that this was all real just so that he wouldn’t have to worry about being stalked through the RPD in the waking world anymore and he could dismiss all this excessive sexualization as nothing more than a legitimate survival strategy.

The monster simply grunts before turning away and kneeling over to retrieve its hat. It examines the article of clothing with the closest thing it can muster to a frown, tracing a thick finger over the bullet hole gracing the rim. With an irritated huff, it places the hat back on its head and strives over to the door, shoving the desk out of the way with an effortless push.

Leon opens his mouth to say something, but nothing comes out other than a single cut-off consonant. He’d wanted to ask where it is going, but he’d actually started to ask it not to leave, and the sickness of that was enough to make his brain short circuit and shut him up. The monster glances back at the nearly imperceivable noise, and its eyes almost look despondent now. Still a little frustrated, still a little confused, but strangely sad at the same time.

Leon’s chance to inquire about the monster’s next intentions are lost before he can recover, however, as it opens the door and ducks out of the room, quietly closing the door behind itself. The sound of stomping footsteps fades down the hall until it disappears into the distance, and Leon is left alone in the deafening silence of the empty room to ponder what the hell he just dreamed. He leans his head back against the wall and closes his eyes as he tries to make sense of what happened, make sense of what this dream means, make sense of himself. His final thoughts start to feel fuzzy as he begins to drift again, seemingly into sleep, but more likely into waking.

All the things he said… Telling that thing that it was allowed to let go, that it was okay to have this… Was he really saying those things to the monster?

Or was he saying those things to himself?


	3. Confused Escape

“You’ve got to be kidding me…”

Leon scowls as he fidgets with the panel on the wall, rearranging wires with the goal of restoring power to the prison doors. It’s simply ridiculous how much problem-solving he’s had to accomplish to get this far. It feels like the RPD was purposefully designed with the intention of being as confusing and difficult to navigate in emergencies as possible. Raccoon City as a whole feels like a convoluted mess, in all honesty, like a living puzzle. Even the clocktower was a puzzle in a sense.

At least Leon has had the benefit of a clear head for his last few tasks. He’d woken up sticky and embarrassed by the scenario his dream had cooked up, but at least his body was rested and his wounds were settled. Perhaps falling asleep had been a blessing in disguise. Still, he feels a little off. Matilda doesn’t feel right in his hands, he can’t shoot straight, and he’s got a persistent soreness in his side, but he’s chalked it up to the compounding physical and psychological stress just like he’s chalked up every other weird thing that has happened over the last few hours.

Thankfully Leon hasn’t had to deal with Mr. Stompy since his initial encounter. He’s heard the murderous catalyst of his unwanted admirations many times as it stomps through the RPD, a sound and vibration that is impossible to miss. Even when it seemed right on top of him, however, the monster never made any actual appearance, and Leon is thankful for that small reprieve. If he were to run into it again, if it were to catch him and start wringing him by the neck, he isn’t sure he’d have it in him to fight back instead of just succumbing to that display of raw strength.

_Come on, Leon, stop thinking about it._

_BEEP._

Leon exhales with relief at the digital sound of the panel activating followed by the metallic clanging of the door to the prison cell sliding open. He turns away from the wires and steps into the small cell, pausing for a moment just to take in the remnants of the horrific scene he witnessed just hours prior. The dust has settled from the brick wall being punched in, and the blood that spilled from Ben’s skull is darkened and dried into the wall and the concrete floor. Leon glances at Ben’s face only to quickly avert his gaze when he remembers one of the man’s eyes popped out of its socket.

Leon shakes his head with a scoff. The hand that did that belongs _nowhere_ near his junk, and he’d do best to remember it.

Whilst trying not to look into Ben’s face again, Leon crouches down to remove the parking pass from his neck. He pauses, however, when his gaze passes over Ben’s jacket, his eyes landing on a small device tucked into the inside pocket: a tape recorder.

“Huh?”

The parking pass momentarily forgotten, Leon retrieves the device and turns it around in his hand. Could this have some of the inside information that Ada was after? Could this have answers? He presses play and holds the tiny speaker up to his ear, hoping desperately that there is something interesting recorded on it.

Ben’s voice emits from the tape. “But that doesn’t explain the rumors about the orphanage. I-I just find it way too coincidental Umbrella’s one of the benefactors.”

An unfamiliar woman’s voice responds, her intonation stern with a hint of tiredness and irritation. “You told me this interview was about the new scholarship Umbrella set up.”

“Come on, Annette. Nobody cares about that. They want to know about the G-virus, and the-“

Annette interrupts. “Where did you hear about this?”

Ben simply proceeds, ignoring the interjection. “-and that big fucking sinkhole in the city which, by the way, rumor has it goes straight to your underground lab.”

“Lab?” Leon whispers. What lab? What virus?

Ben continues. “Now, are you going to talk to me, or are you-“

“This interview is over,” Annette states abruptly, and the tape goes silent for a few seconds as she presumably leaves the scene.

One last word from Ben rings out before the tape ends. “Bitch.”

Leon hums contemplatively. “…What are they after?” he mutters to himself. Everything Ben said about Chief Irons before, and now about Umbrella… What is going on?

Leon shakes his head as he stashes the recorder in one of his pockets. He doesn’t have enough information to figure anything out yet, so there’s no point in wasting precious time speculating. He’s already wasted enough precious time sleeping, after all. He removes the parking pass from the lanyard around Ben’s neck, then pushes himself to his feet. Now that he can finally get out of this place, maybe there will be some answers waiting for him on the other side of the parking garage shutter.

With one last glance at Ben’s corpse, Leon turns to examine the rest of the cell for anything useful. He notices a first aid spray stashed behind the toilet and eagerly claims it, his faith in the stuff immovable after seeing just how quickly it got his wounds from the licker into manageable condition. He also sees a memo on the desk, and he picks it up to examine. It appears to have been handwritten by Ben prior to his unfortunate demise.

> _The station’s swarming with monsters. Even here I can hear their cries. But it’s not the zombies I’m afraid of._
> 
> _Codename: Tyrant._
> 
> _The ultimate bioweapon, developed by those bastards in utmost secrecy. To think that that thing might be wandering around here…_
> 
> _Chances are they’ve ordered it to wipe out the witnesses._

Leon frowns as his eyes scan over the messy handwriting a second time. This must be referring to the leather-clad monstrosity. After all, Ben’s panic made him seem to be very aware of its identity as it stomped down the hallway behind the cell. Leon’s gaze stops on the word ‘bioweapon’, followed by ‘developed’. So he was right when he likened it to a weapon in vaguely human form, and he was right when he considered how carefully outfitted it seemed to be. It isn’t like the zombies, accidental, untargeted, nothing more than collateral damage of whoever these ‘bastards’ are that Ben wrote of. Rather, it was developed. Designed.

He reads over the last sentence again. The thing being on some twisted mission to kill every survivor makes a lot of sense in retrospect. It didn’t seem interested in eating him like the lickers and the zombies, so its intentions must have been more practical in nature, more ordered. It possessed a clear motivation, a plan. Only something with some semblance of intelligence can execute orders like that, Leon notes, and that confirms his estimate of just how dangerous the thing truly is.

Lastly, his eyes hover over the most imposing word on the page: ‘Tyrant’. It’s befitting of something so overpowering and brutal. It’s also a much better label than just ‘the monster’. Or ‘Mr. Stompy’. Leon internalizes the word as he folds up the paper and crams it into another pocket, deciding here and now to hold onto every piece of evidence he can get his hands on. Maybe giving the information to Ada will convince her to entrust him with even a vague explanation of this chaos.

With the room sufficiently scoured over, Leon steps back out of the cell and starts to make his way back toward the parking garage. It finally seems, at least in this moment, that he’s going to get out of all this alive and with all his limbs in tow. He can only pray that Claire is still out there somewhere, equally alive and adorned with all four appendages. It feels strange knowing that he is about to leave the RPD and likely never return. He’d worked so hard to get to this place, and now he’s worked twice as hard to get the hell out. Perhaps the finality of this departure would be sentimental in another place and another time, a world where the city doesn’t reek of death and he could have had a chance to make better memories here.

Leon’s anemoia is cut off when the red emergency lights flicker to life and an alarm sounds from the main hall of the prison, either a malfunction or a failsafe that must have been set off by his tampering with the door panel. The last thing he needs right now is more noise to draw more attention from unwanted abominations, so of course that’s what’s going to happen. As if that isn’t enough, the doors to the rest of the prison clank open, releasing anything that might have previously been barricaded behind them.

“That’s not good…” Leon mutters. It turns out that he is very correct, as he quickly turns the corner to stare down a hallway littered with dozens of zombies. There’s no way Leon will make it through such a writhing labyrinth of cognitively-dead biomatter without expending his entire supply of ammo and exhausting any energy he has stored up over the last few relatively uneventful hours. Thinking fast, he lunges for a switch on the wall to open up the gate to the annex corridor, a route that is hopefully devoid of zombie obstacles. With the gate open, Leon hurries into the corridor, then skids to a halt when he sees a familiar massive figure looming at the end of the hall.

The Tyrant.

Leon does a 180 and marches straight back toward the hall of zombies. _Nope. Nope nope nope. Fuck that._

_Wait, no, poor word choice, please don’t fuck that._

Leon’s panicked determination to not get stuck in any self-compromising situations lends him the extra energy he needs to push his way past the first few zombies, dodging around a few of their lunges as he headshots others. One of the zombies manages to latch onto his arm and prepares itself to tear into his flesh, but the sudden sound of loud stomping entering the corridor behind him fuels his panic just enough to elbow the individual in the throat and throw it from his body. He doesn’t even bother to shoot it so that it will stay down, confident that the Tyrant will simply stomp it to death for being in the way of its true target. Speaking of, it has already begun to throw zombies to the side with nothing more than a sweep of its gigantic arms.

Leon charges deeper into the undead crowd, kicking and elbowing and shooting as the creatures grab at his clothes and hungrily pull him toward drooling and sometimes detached maws. Luckily the chaos of being caught in such a large group works to Leon’s advantage rather than his detriment, the different zombies pulling him in different directions causing him to stagger horribly but preventing any particular individual from getting a good, lasting grip on him. With the end of the mob in sight, he throws himself the rest of the way, but one of the zombies he threw to the ground manages to grab at the leg of his pants just as he lunges. His body goes crashing to the ground as his foot is pulled out from beneath him, and an accidental shot discharges from his gun just before he loses his grip on the weapon and it goes sliding across the concrete floor.

Leon quickly rolls onto his back and kicks the zombie in the face with his free foot, but it just latches onto him harder, dragging itself toward him to take a bite out of his calf. Meanwhile the Tyrant is getting closer by the second, its violent trek through the zombies leaving the walls and the floor glistening with their rancid blood. Leon tries to prepare the shotgun he picked up earlier to shoot the zombie, but the position he’s fallen into prevents him from reaching his arm around at the right angle to grab it. Thinking fast, he instead draws the combat knife he received from Marvin and reaches down to stab repeatedly at the creature’s head, and it snarls angrily as it recoils from the damage. Still, it won’t let go of his leg, and Leon braces himself to try stabbing it in the arm, praying that he won’t accidentally stab his own leg in the process.

Leon flinches when a leather boot suddenly comes stomping down on the zombie’s upper back, audibly snapping its spine and shattering one of its shoulder blades. The impromptu fight – or curb-stomp, rather – for the right to be the one to kill him gives him just the leverage he needs to rip his leg free from the suddenly lax grasp of his zombie attacker. Leon forces himself not to look up at the Tyrant towering above him, lacking confidence in his own ability to stay collected in the presence of the titan. Instead he keeps his gaze low and scrambles to his feet, ditching the knife in exchange for his dropped handgun and booking it down the rest of the hall as fast as his tired legs can carry him.

After making his way through the rest of the prison halls, shooting at a few more sporadic zombies and trying his best to block out the stomping that is distantly following him, Leon bursts through the metal door leading out to the parking garage. He sprints down the path that leads to the shutter, his hands already fumbling with his pockets in search of the keycard he needs to get out of here.

_CRASH!_

Leon staggers back a few steps as the concrete wall to his left literally explodes, blinding him in a cloud of dust and rubble. Leon doesn’t have even a second to react before a massive hand emerges from the murky air, reaching for his neck. Not that it matters, because even if Leon did have time to do something, that wouldn’t change the fact that he is currently frozen like a deer in headlights, with the Tyrant’s piercing gaze being quite equivocal to said headlights. Its eyes are still just as cold and murderous and vaguely indicative of some underlying awareness and intelligence as they were during their first encounter. Leon’s entire body feels heavy with dread, and he convinces himself that he doesn’t feel anything else in the slightest regardless of any distant associations with dream-state pleasures.

Leon expects those leather-clothed fingers to wrap around his neck and choke the life out of him, and he doubts he’ll be able to get away a second time. What Leon doesn’t expect is for the outstretched hand to stop just before making contact with his skin. Leon stares at the hand that has halted just inches in front of his throat. He urges himself to take advantage of the hesitation, to snap out of his daze and continue to book it across the garage. Instead he just stands there stupidly, his legs refusing to connect to his brain. All he can manage to do is drift his gaze back up to meet the Tyrant’s own stare, and he is met with something even more unexpected and even more discomforting. The Tyrant is staring down at him with a very familiar look in its eyes: despondent, frustrated, angry, confused, lost. Slowly, it pulls back the hand reaching for Leon’s throat in complete silence.

He narrows his eyes as he stares up at the giant that is suddenly so reluctant to kill him with seemingly no precedence. He opens his mouth and attempts to whisper an inquiry through trembling lips. “What are you doin-“

Leon jumps at the sound of an engine starting and the sudden appearance of blinding headlights. Leon and the Tyrant both spin to face the source, and before either have any time to react, a SWAT van reels across the parking garage and slams into the Tyrant at full speed, crushing it against the concrete wall it just burst through so effortlessly. Leon falls back onto his ass in surprise, and a chunk of concrete knocked loose from the wall barely misses him as it flies from the wreckage.

When the dust clears, all Leon can see of the Tyrant is a leather-clad arm sticking out from between the crushed front of the armored vehicle and the cracked wall, limp and unmoving. He swallows a lump in his throat as he tries to push down the conflicting emotions rising in his chest. On one hand, he’s relieved that at least one portion of this nightmare is over, that the Tyrant is finally incapacitated for good. On the other hand, he feels a strange melancholy. He tries to tell himself that this subtle sorrow is misplaced, that the only reason he feels any kind of emotional connection to the monstrosity at all is because of that stupid dream. But there’s something more to it than that, a sense of loss at a new aching question that is now left permanently unanswered. It had been trying to hunt him down and kill him all night, but when it finally had the chance to finish the job, it _didn’t_.

Why?

A figure steps out of the driver’s door of the SWAT van, and Leon quickly turns his head at the sound of heels clacking against the floor. “Ada!?” he gawks.

“This is getting old,” she replies as she walks away from him, her voice irritated. “Saving your ass. That’s twice.”

Leon pushes himself to his feet, determined not to let Ada get away again without one last wholehearted attempt to get answers from her. “I didn’t realize you were keeping score.”

Ada turns around, her body language and tone of voice indicating just how furious the jesting comment left her. “Look, this isn’t a game!”

She is cut off by the sound of the van shifting, and she and Leon both turn to face the movement. The arm of the previously incapacitated Tyrant has lifted once more to grasp the corner of the van and push it away from the wall, and Leon feels yet another onslaught of conflicting emotions. He mostly feels exasperated that getting rammed into a concrete wall at what was at least forty miles per hour didn’t kill this thing. A separate part of him feels amazed at the power the Tyrant exudes, each display of strength continuing to one-up the last. Leon had already found it impressive that something could punch through a brick wall. He’d been even more astounded that it could punch through foot-thick concrete. But now it’s surviving getting hit by thousands of pounds and then immediately pushing away those thousands of pounds like they weigh nothing at all, just like it lifted that helicopter with a single hand, and it leaves Leon engulfed in awe.

Yet an even smaller part of him is relieved that the thing isn’t dead. That part of him feels that something so awe-inducing and powerful and stunning doesn’t deserve to be destroyed in such a horrific manner, and he really, really hates it.

Ada lets out a noise of exasperation. “Nothing dies down here,” she exclaims as she withdraws a small switch from the pocket of her coat.

Leon glances at her. “What’s tha-“

_BANG!_

With a click of the switch, Ada remotely detonates the explosives stored in the back of the SWAT van, sending sheets of steel and various other vehicular parts flying apart in a massive fiery explosion. The pushing of the vehicle ceases, at least if the newfound stillness is anything to go by, but Leon can’t see the Tyrant’s arm through the flames to confirm its deceased status. Still, it is only logical to assume that it is dead for real this time. Blunt force trauma and violent combustion are two very different things, after all, so it would be reasonable for the force and heat of the explosion to destroy the thing even after it pushed through getting crushed.

Heels clack once more as Ada turns away from the carnage to approach the shutter of the garage. “I take it you have the keycard?” she asks.

Leon almost feels angered by Ada’s immediate dismissal of the scene that just played out. She just obliterated the most incredible feat of biology Leon has ever witnessed, and she’s acting like it was nothing important at all. He tells himself he’s just frustrated that she’s treating such a major victory so nonchalantly, dismissing her own competence and dismissing how much she just changed the chances of their survival now that the Tyrant can’t stalk them around. He ignores the glaring feeling that he’s actually mad at her for destroying the thing at all, that the monster deserved to live for some reason that isn’t based at all in current reality.

Still, he can’t say anything about it. Expressing any kind of regret for killing the Tyrant, any kind of concern for its existence, would just out him as the fucked up freak that he is trying so hard not to be. Instead he reaches for the keycard in his pocket, a task that is now much easier when he isn’t being chased by bioweapons. His hand also brushes against the tape recorder, and he retrieves that too.

“Yeah,” he states. “And this.” He tosses the recorder to Ada, who catches it gracefully. “I was hoping you could explain what’s on it.”

Ada just gives a dismissive shrug. “Maybe. After I hear it.” Leon frowns at the tone of her voice, which is still incredibly apathetic. He did all this hard work, getting all the keys and pieces and parts necessary to get the keycard and the recorder all whilst zombies and Tyrants and other mutated monsters attempted to rip him limb from limb. What else does he have to do to get her to like him? Even if she had to save his life twice now, he doesn’t understand why she’s so irritated about it. She didn’t even have to go very far out of her way to do it. “Let’s get out of here,” she continues as she steps the rest of the way to the shutter, and Leon shakes off the frustration he feels. If he’s going to earn her trust and get answers, he needs to be patient.

Leon approaches the parking pass reader and inserts the card into the slot. To his relief, the light turns green with a beep of confirmation, and mechanisms rattle as they begin to raise the shutter. Ada slips underneath the metal gate before it has even reached her hips, and Leon is quick to follow. He stops just before ducking under, however, and glances back at the flaming van still barely visible around the corner. It’s a sight that leaves him feeling despondent, perhaps even sad. It’s confusing.

He supposes it’s better this way, in the end. The Tyrant can’t hurt anyone else if it’s dead, and maybe now Leon can finally move on and forget that he was ever distracted by any of this insanity, regardless of his questions about it remaining unanswered.

He steps out into the light rain and the darkness of night, Ada already several strides away from him. He watches as she raises the speaker of the tape recorder to her ear, but he can’t see her reaction with her back to him. When the recording is finished, she stashes it in her coat pocket.

“Is that the intel you needed?” Leon asks hopefully as he lightly jogs to catch up.

“Unfortunately, no,” Ada replies, and Leon’s heart sinks. “Ben didn’t come through.”

“Well, what exactly are you looking for?” Leon pries, hoping he can find some other way to earn intel.

“More info on the people responsible for this mess.” Another vague answer, naturally. “What about you? Trying to save the world?”

Again, Leon doesn’t appreciate the snark. Sure, he’d like to save the world. Wouldn’t anyone? He’s here to help people. But he needs a less sappy answer than that. “I told Lieutenant Branagh I’d bring help.”

“Good luck getting that...” The sarcasm is a pessimistic notion, but a realistic one. Leon knows deep down that this city is beyond helping, and he just needs to get the hell out of here before he gets distracted by anything else.

Leon’s hand hovers over the pocket containing Ben’s memo about the Tyrant, and he contemplates whether or not he should ask Ada about it. Now that he thinks about it, the zombie epidemic could surely be the result of a bioweapon as well. It would make sense that the people who are responsible for the outbreak and the ‘bastards’ who developed the Tyrant are one and the same, and that relevant info might be of use to Ada. Still, he doubts she will be forthcoming with who the ‘bastards’ are even with the additional evidence, so there’s really not much point in asking.

Besides, he’d like to keep some memento of this story that would otherwise be unbelievable, if not just to convince himself that the Tyrant and the terror that it invoked was entirely real and he isn’t just delusional. He has a feeling that if he hands over the note to Ada, he won’t be getting it back.

The two come to a halt at the end of the road, the pavement dropping straight into a construction zone several meters down. “Road’s out,” Ada declares, as if that isn’t obvious. She turns and nods toward the strip of shops along the side of the road, where the words “Gun Shop Kendo” glare through the dreary rain in bright neon-red letters. “Going through that gun shop looks like the only way.”

Leon watches as Ada approaches the locked doors to the gun shop, then kneels down to pick the lock. Maybe he can find some decent combat supplies while they’re passing through. Matilda’s high-capacity magazine mod seems to have disappeared at some point through unknown means that Leon can’t even begin to deduce, and he never managed to pick up a better handgun anywhere, so he could use an upgrade. Then again, it’s apparently been days since the outbreak started and weeks since people started getting restless about the murders and sporadic incidents of cannibalism. The place has probably been ransacked by now.

Sure enough, Ada opens the doors to disorganized chaos. “What a mess…” she mutters as she steps into the building, and Leon follows suit. The floor is littered with debris and toppled shelves, and the few shelves that remain standing are completely bare. It looks like the shop has already been stripped of anything useful.

Still, Leon scans the shelves as he and Ada pass through, hoping to at least spot some overlooked ammo. Sure enough, his gaze passes over a single overlooked grenade. As he reaches out to take it, something else catches his eye, and he turns to find a long barrel that he can mod his shotgun with. He takes that too. It certainly isn’t the best thing a gun shop could have to offer, but he isn’t about to turn his nose up at any supplies he can get his hands on.

Whilst browsing the mess, Leon makes the mistake of letting his guard down. As he turns one of the corners, an unfamiliar man steps out and points the barrel of a gun right in his face. Leon figures he must be the owner of the gun shop. Kendo, perhaps. “Don’t move,” he orders, and Leon freezes in place, trying his best to come across as calm and collected to what is likely a panicking civilian.

“I’m not gonna hurt you,” Leon calmly states as he glances over at the man. He’s surprised to find that Kendo appears uninjured, albeit disheveled. He didn’t think he’d run into any more survivors at this point.

“I said DON’T MOVE,” the man reiterates forcefully, but the slight shake in his voice betrays his superficial confidence.

“I’m just passing through,” Leon continues, staring at the ground so as not to make eye contact and generate any kind of unintentional intimidation. “I’m going to ask you to lower that weapon.”

“Like hell you are,” Kendo mutters under his breath. “You’re going to turn around and go right back out the way you came in.”

Leon glances down the hall that the man emerged from, and his eyes fall on a young girl standing in the doorway. His heart shakes at the realization that she’s turning and this man is grieving his child that isn’t even dead yet. Leon takes a steadying breath, knowing that a situation with such high emotional stakes will be incredibly difficult to deescalate. “I think your daughter needs help, sir.”

Kendo cocks his gun, and Leon takes a half step back. “Don’t tell me how to deal with my daughter.”

Leon’s ears perk at the returning sound of clacking heels, and Ada emerges from the haze, pointing her own gun at the distraught father. “Drop it.”

Kendo starts to turn between Leon and Ada as he steps backward, and Leon takes advantage of the distraction to draw his own handgun. He can see the panic rising in the other man’s eyes. It peaks when Ada turns to point the gun at the child, who has shuffled a bit further down the hall. He holds up a hand and steps between Ada and the girl. “No! Wait!”

“Step aside,” Ada commands. “We need to terminate her before she turns.” Leon holds back a wince. It’s completely true, but he might have tried to use more careful language.

The father seems to concur with the language issue. “’Terminate’?” he spits. “That’s my fucking daughter!”

With a sigh, Leon lowers his handgun. This is difficult enough, and the last thing they need to be doing is making it more difficult. “Ada… Just let them be.” To Leon’s surprise, she actually lowers her gun, albeit after a moment of hesitation.

“Emma,” Kendo calls back to his daughter. “Sweetheart, I told you to stay put.”

“Daddy…?”

Leon’s heart breaks as he watches the man back defeatedly toward the disoriented child. “Yeah, Emmie. Daddy’s here. I’m here, okay?” He kneels down to pull her into a fragile embrace, his breath staggering as he barely holds back tears. “Those fucking things outside… Look what they did to us.” He turns to face Leon again. “You’re a cop. You’re supposed to know something. How did this happen? Huh!?” The anger in his voice has clearly succumb to defeat, and the punctuated “huh” does little to rectify that. Leon glances at Ada, waiting for her to offer some explanation, some recompense, but she simply watches in silence. “She was our sweet little angel…” Kendo continues when it becomes clear that he isn’t going to be getting any answers.

“Mommy…” The girl’s voice is hoarse, quiet, breathy, hardly even alive at this point.

“Mommy’s sleeping, honey, okay?” Kendo replies in the most soothing voice he can muster. “And I’m gonna put you to bed too, okay? Emma…” Leon stands by helplessly as the father picks up Emma and retreats back to the door at the end of the hallway with her held against his chest. He turns in the doorway and gives Leon one last look of loathing, broken defeat. “…Just go. Just give us some privacy.” Before Leon has any chance to respond, the man slams the door shut with the back of his gun, and the shop is once again filled only with the sound of the pattering rain.

The sorrow that Leon feels for the broken family is quickly supplanted by something else, a rising fury at how unfair it is for someone to lose everything like that and never even understand why. He turns to Ada, the frustration evident in his voice. “You know, it’s one thing to keep the truth from me, but why him?”

A shot rings out from behind the door, and it makes Leon feel even worse.

“I want to find out what’s happening here, and stop whoever’s behind it,” Leon continues, his tone making it clear that he’s done playing games with the FBI agent, done skirting around the truth. He points to the door. “Helping people like them… That’s why I joined the force.”

Ada steps forward to face Leon directly, and he wishes he could see the intent hidden behind her large sunglasses. Why has she been wearing them this whole time, to make herself look more mysterious? Who wears sunglasses indoors? Or in the middle of the night? He holds himself straight and braces himself for her to simply supply him with another rage-inducingly vague response. Instead she gives him the first real answer she’s given him all night.

“My mission is to take down Umbrella’s entire operation.”

Of course, of course this is Umbrella Corporation’s fault. Ben mentioned a virus in that interview with Umbrella. The virus, the bioweapons, the zombies, it all makes sense, and Leon isn’t sure why he didn’t make that connection sooner.

“We may not make it out,” Ada continues, and Leon realizes just where this is going. His goal was to get out of the RPD so that he could escape the city, but now that Ada is finally opening up a little, he has the opportunity to help her instead, to delve even deeper into this mess, to risk his life even more than he already has for a city that he knows is already doomed.

But if Kendo was still alive and uninfected, then surely there are more survivors scattered about the city that can be helped. Not to mention he’s hungry for more information, more answers. Closure.

He doesn’t even hesitate. “Whatever it takes to save this city. Count me in.”


	4. Empty

Everything is hazy and unclear, and nothing makes sense, and this isn’t supposed to be a variable, and something needs to be done to fix it _right now_.

The hall shakes. The skull of a straggling zombie roaming said hall splatters against the wall. A door slams open, a room is scanned. Empty. Wonderfully empty. Frustratingly empty. Empty empty empty. All these rooms are empty. As empty as a scar on one’s left temple, as empty as a hole in the rim of a hat, as empty as two windows to an equally empty soul, as empty as that empty soul’s empty understanding of why everything feels so inexplicably empty.

T-00 stomps through the RPD, overwhelmed by a strange frustration at how he can’t stop thinking. Tyrants aren’t made to think. But every time he tries to stop thinking, he just ends up thinking about not thinking, and that still counts as thinking. He clenches his hands into fists at his sides at the thought of the inescapable chaos of thought. As one of the first successful T-103 prototypes, he’s been activated and training for months now, and never had this _thinking_ been an issue until a few hours ago.

It’s all the fault of that human male.

How was T-00 supposed to know that the frustratingly limber target would accidentally shoot his implant upon being caught? The probability of such a thing happening should have been virtually impossible. The human was disoriented, shooting blindly, and he just so happened to shoot at just the right angle for the bullet to slip past the brim of the hat and strike the tiny device, rendering it useless.

This didn’t render _T-00_ useless, of course. The device was nothing more than a supplementary modification to optimize his efficacy in accomplishing his two assignments: terminating all survivors and retrieving a sample of the G-virus. It periodically released electrical signals that served as a sort of focusing agent, reaffirming his commands and keeping him fixated on the task at hand. It also served as a one-way communication device, allowing him to receive updated instructions from Umbrella in real-time should anything regarding his assignments change. It was a lot like the limiters covering his body, ultimately unnecessary but nonetheless conducive to accomplishing the task at hand.

It hurt to have the connection cut off so abruptly. It didn’t help that the device was in the middle of delivering a signal when it was shot, leaving his brain stuttering in confusion. His prey managed to slip from his grasp in that compromised moment, and after he took so long to recover from the lucky shot while clawing at his face in agony, it was inevitable that the human male escaped his line of sight and disappeared somewhere into the building like a filthy cockroach squeezing behind a baseboard.

But that wasn’t what made him start thinking. Not yet, at least. He’d been training long before the implant was ever introduced, and he always did just fine then. Device or no device, it wouldn’t make a difference. T-00 already committed his assignments and extraction point to memory, and surely he wouldn’t require some artificial focusing agent to stay on track with such basic tasks.

T-00 continued to patrol the building after that. He wanted to ensure that every survivor was eliminated before moving on to his secondary assignment, which would likely require him to leave the RPD. And in order to do that, he needed to find the human male that escaped his grasp and finish what he started.

He did find the human male again, as he never doubted he would. Roaming the halls wasn’t yielding results, so he started opening all the doors, scanning all the rooms. He almost missed the human male’s presence entirely, considering that the male had been hiding behind a desk in a small, unassuming office. But the male’s scent was strong in the room, much stronger than it had any right to be, for a reason that T-00 would soon be made aware of.

T-00 assumed that the reason the human male was curled up behind the desk was because he heard the footsteps approaching and decided to hide, so it was rather strange when he was caught so off-guard by the Tyrant’s sudden appearance in the room. T-00 recalls watching the male squirm up against the wall in panic, still analogous to a filthy cockroach, tiny and pathetic and weak. All the male managed to do was shoot off his hat. If the male hadn’t already been targeted for extermination, that would have been the capital offense to do it.

It should have ended there. It almost did. The human male’s neck was in T-00’s grasp. He watched the weaker being struggle, watched him grow more and more feeble with oxygen deprivation, watched the consciousness start to drain from his eyes. Maybe with the implant spurring him on, he would have continued without giving any of it much additional thought.

But the implant wasn’t spurring him on anymore, and against all that he expected of his unflawed nature, he allowed himself to become distracted.

There was a novelty to this encounter. Every human to ever succumb to T-00’s destructive strength was exactly the same. Their faces looked afraid, their noises sounded afraid, their trembling forms felt afraid, but most importantly, their hormones smelled afraid, a distinct mixture of cortisol and adrenaline that was as disgusting as it was savory. Even this human male exhibited those attributes of fear during their first chase. T-00 relished in that fear. The look and sound and feeling and scent of terrified prey was fulfilling. This time, however, the male looked and sounded and felt afraid, but he didn’t smell afraid. In fact, T-00 had _no idea_ what he smelled like.

But for some inexplicable reason, in some completely different way, it still smelled _good_. And against everything he was programmed to do, T-00 _thought_.

T-00 thought about how this could be an important oversight. He hadn’t been trained to deal with something like this, and he thought that deducing the meaning of this hormonal signal might assist him in the future tracking and incapacitation of targets. After all, adaptation is part of his nature. Biological adaptation, specifically, but there is no established rule against engaging in behavioral adaptation as well. Besides, the human male’s firearm had already been dislodged from his grasp, and T-00’s implant was already fried, so there was little need for precaution. Against his better judgement, T-00 loosened his grip on the male’s neck and proceeded to investigate.

Various observations eventually led T-00 to the conclusion that this was the scent of human sexual arousal. For one thing, the human male’s genitals were exposed and erect, evidently primed for copulation. More interesting, though, were the other lingering scents in the room, faint and nearly unnoticeable beneath the potency of the male’s hormones. There was a faint hint of Tyrant, strangely, which didn’t make much sense. T-00 had never been in this room, so it couldn’t be his own scent. And he was not aware of any other Tyrants assigned to do anything even remotely close to the RPD. It didn’t smell right, either. Too musky. Smoky, even. Almost sick. He dismissed it in lieu of the other scent in the room, the distinct scent of an aroused human female, and T-00 came to the logical conclusion that the male was copulating with this female prior to hearing his thunderous approach and hiding the female somewhere in the room.

After making sure the human male would be unable to escape or fight back, T-00 searched the room with inhuman meticulousness. When that search failed to yield anything, and when the male dared to suggest that it never would yield anything, T-00 felt a bubbling rage that these feeble human mates were somehow outsmarting him. He lashed out, intent on confirming the accuracy of his conclusions.

Reassessment of the scents in the room, however, only forced T-00 to reassess those conclusions. The faint scent of the human female was not attached to the male’s body in the slightest. It wasn’t just faint because it was masked by the male’s stronger scent, it was faint because it was old; not quite a whole day old, but a good number of hours old at the very least. There was no female there anymore.

Then the human male began intimately touching himself, releasing even more of those hormones despite the evident lack of any partner for copulation to provoke such a behavior, and that just made things more confusing.

In his desperation-fueled search for an explanation, T-00 found himself falling into a completely unfamiliar sensation. The more of those scents he took in, the more his mind started to react in ways that were outside of his control. The scent wasn’t just good anymore, like the scent of fear. No, it was much more alluring, enticing, pleasing. He wanted more of it. He pressed his nose deep into the human male’s neck just so that he could drown himself in the scent. He instinctively started making a rumbling sound of satisfaction deep within his chest. Surely the implant would have struck T-00 out of the irrational stupor by then. But left to his own devices, he struggled to find a reason to stop losing himself to the scent. Everything about it was so incredibly good.

Everything about it was so incredibly _wrong_.

T-00 didn’t understand. T-00 didn’t understand why this human male was aroused. T-00 didn’t understand why this human male was touching himself in the manner that he was. T-00 didn’t understand why this human male smelled so appealing. Against the instinctual pleading of his senses, T-00 forced himself to pull away.

The human male spoke at that point, and it only made T-00’s confusion transcend into frustration. Nobody had ever spoken to him with the tone of voice that this human male spoke to him with. The male began to inquire about T-00’s apparent confusion, asking what there was to be confused about, asking if the Tyrant understood why he was doing what he was doing to himself. It was at that point that the male took T-00’s hand and guided it to his erection, and the male’s coinciding declaration and bodily response to the contact only served to catalyze T-00’s ever-growing frustration.

 _He_ was the reason this human male was so aroused.

It was so incredibly frustrating for the sole reason that it was supposed to be an explanation but it just made everything make _less_ sense. Why was the human male engaging in what could only be interpreted as a courtship display for _a Tyrant_ , something so far removed from serving any role as a viable mate? What was the male hoping to achieve? Was there some secret to this repetitive pattern of self-contact that was simply eluding T-00? If so, then T-00 wanted to know this secret, this human weakness, that could optimize his execution of his orders even further.

Perhaps he also desired to satisfy an aching curiosity on the matter. But he isn’t supposed to be driven by curiosity, he’s supposed to be driven by…

Actually, what is he supposed to be driven by? The orders he receives aren’t the driving force of his behaviors, only the destination. Why does he even…?

T-00 shook away the thought as soon as he realized that it was a thought. He isn’t supposed to be driven by curiosity, and he isn’t supposed to think, and he isn’t supposed to question any of it.

Still, the forbidden curiosity led T-00 to replace the human male’s hand with his own and mimic the pumping movements in hopes of figuring out that secret, and the male responded instantaneously by clutching T-00’s limiters with a sudden desperation while strangely pleasing sounds slipped from his mouth. As T-00 watched whatever was left of the male’s composure disappear beneath a mess of squirming and moaning, he began to feel a form of desperation of his own, a desperation that undeniably radiated from his own genitals, a desperation that he didn’t understand. He wanted it to go away, but it wouldn’t.

It wasn’t long before the unfamiliar ritual culminated in the human male throwing his head back with a moan and his reproductive fluids spilling across the leather of T-00’s glove. T-00 pulled away to examine the substance dripping down his hand, leaving the now-limp male unrestrained. T-00 finally realized _what_ the male had been trying to accomplish, at the very least. He had been trying to simulate copulation in order to release these fluids. But that still didn’t explain _why_. It still didn’t explain what the point was, what was accomplished through doing this aside from wasting biological material. T-00 felt like he was missing something, and no matter how hard he tried to grasp it, it eluded him. He felt completely lost. He also felt strangely hot, like he was trapped in his own skin.

T-00 isn’t sure why he allowed the human male to proceed in the way that he did. Perhaps it was the enjoyable scent of the hormones getting to him after all this time, or perhaps it was the distractedness elicited by the newfound throbbing between his legs. Nonetheless, he allowed the male to pull aside some of his limiters. The reveal of the Tyrant’s massive genitals was clearly startling to the male, and T-00 may have found the response amusing if he hadn’t been so startled himself. The sight of his own erection had him realizing that the desperation and heat in his abdomen was his own arousal. He didn’t understand why he was aroused, though. There was no need to be aroused. There is never a need to be aroused. Tyrants are not intended to reproduce. T-00 found himself experiencing an emotion that he despised with every fiber of his being: uncertainty.

T-00 had always been able to simply destroy any problem presented to him with calculated force. But how was he supposed to destroy the problem if his own body was the problem?

The human male proceeded to introduce an alternative solution, what T-00 soon realized was an attempt at reciprocation. What did the male call it again? “Sex etiquette” or something. A weird notion. Why would a behavior so biologically innate suddenly require arbitrary etiquette? T-00 didn’t have much of a chance to think about it, however, because his capacity to think straight halted immediately at the onset of the male’s touch.

It was unexpected, to say the very least. The male’s hands were respectably sized for a human, but they still looked so small wrapped around something so comparatively large. They were slightly rough at the palms and fingertips but incredibly soft everywhere else. They were gentle. Experienced. Attentive. Very attentive. So very attentive to the most sensitive places that T-00 never would have known could be so sensitive. The question of why the male had been doing this to himself, the question of what secret there was behind the strange ritual, the question of why the male’s hormones smelled so enticing, suddenly had such an obvious answer.

Instinct and propagation be damned. Copulation, whether real or simulated, whether reproductively viable or not, apparently feels _very, very good_.

So good, in fact, that T-00 quickly began to struggle to maintain his intimidating and stoic composure. He tried. He really did. He managed to withstand several minutes of the stimulation unmoving and silent. But then it was just too much, and he found himself hunching over with a sound not unlike the moans the human male was uttering just moments prior. He could feel himself shaking, his mind growing hazy, his member leaking something as it was stroked by fragile human hands.

He hated it and loved it at the same time. He hated that he was losing control and succumbing to a weakness that he never realized he had. He loved that it felt so good despite that. He hated that he loved it more than he hated it. He tried to pull himself back out of the haze, to just reclaim control and reach out and snap this human male’s neck for having the audacity to incapacitate him like this. But then the male started whispering alluring words, telling him that he could give in, that he could let go, that it would feel so much better. Not that he had to, but that he could.

Choice. A weird thing to offer a Tyrant.

T-00 wasn’t sure how this could feel any better. But the promise was enough to push the apprehensions from his mind. He _wanted_ to give in. He _wanted_ to let go. This human male felt good. _So, so good_. T-00 remembers making more sounds, desperate huffs, deep groans. He remembers grasping at the male’s side, silently commanding him to not stop, _don’t stop, please don’t stop, don’t stop don’t stop don’t stop-_

The pleasure was joined by an almost painful urgency, and in one last burst of clarity, T-00 tried to reel back, to retake control, to push everything back down and hold it all in and never let it back out. The human male must have been able to read him at that point, because the male immediately told him not to hold it back, to just _let it feel good, let it feel good, it feels so good, so incredibly good, keep making it feel good, good good good good good-_

The release was euphoric in a manner that T-00 still isn’t sure he has the words to describe. Every touch was suddenly amplified to the point of being nearly incomprehensible as the sensation of unfiltered pleasure washed over his body. The way the human male’s hands continued to stroke him and caress him and coax everything out of him seemed incredibly knowledgeable in how to draw out the pleasure as long as possible. The motions were almost reverent, in some strange way, like a spiritual ritual rather than a physical, carnal, sexual one.

When the mind-numbing pleasure of orgasm finally receded, it left behind a much subtler pleasure, a lingering haze of calm and warmth and contentment. T-00 closed his eyes so he could focus on it, bask in it, commit it to memory. He was vaguely aware of the human male fumbling to return the Tyrant’s genitals to his limiters with trembling hands. He was also made vaguely aware of just how roughly he was still grasping the male’s pelvis, surely leaving horrendous bruises. He drew the hand away, opening and closing it into a fist repeatedly in some half-hearted attempt to ground himself back in tactile reality.

When the human male asked if T-00 was okay, the question stabbed him like a knife. He realized he just allowed himself to be overwhelmed by an organism so inferior to him. He allowed himself to show weakness. And because of that, this human male was expressing concern for his well-being. Prey isn’t supposed to be concerned! It’s supposed to be afraid! It’s supposed to be dead!

But this human male was neither afraid nor dead. And for some reason, T-00 didn’t really want him to be. At least, not anymore. And that just made T-00 feel even weaker. T-00 was not made to think, and as such, he was not made to feel either. He was never meant to feel like this. He was never meant to feel this pleasure, this euphoria.

He realized he is flawed. He is broken.

T-00 urged himself to just do his job and finish his task, to reach out and squeeze the life out of the human male. The male let his guard down, after all, and it would be so easy to just end it. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He couldn’t bring his hand to move up and wrap around the male’s neck, or grasp the male’s head and crush it like an egg. Despite his instincts, despite his orders, something in him wanted to let this one escape.

More worrisome was that something in T-00 wanted to stay, because even if he let this prey escape, surely the male could still be torn apart by some other horror stalking the halls, and something about that idea was incredibly upsetting. Surely the only way to ensure the male’s survival would be to protect him personally.

It didn’t matter, though. T-00 couldn’t stay. He refused to follow this human around and protect him like some pathetic lapdog, even though part of him suddenly longed to do just that. He had a job to do, an assignment to accomplish, a greater purpose to serve, even if it was a greater purpose that he wasn’t even fully certain of.

A greater purpose that not only offered him nothing in terms of personal fulfillment, but outright denied him these arbitrary pleasures he was never even allowed to know existed.

But it isn’t his place to feel personally fulfilled. It isn’t his place to feel pleasure. It isn’t his place to feel anything at all. He can’t have this, because he isn’t supposed to have this, because he wasn’t made to have this, and that is simply the way it is, and it isn’t his place to question it either.

The afterglow was gone then. He just felt empty. Empty empty empty. Like these rooms.

He pushed himself from the floor. He fixed his limiters. He retrieved a gun he found hidden in one of the drawers and dropped it into the human male’s lap. If he couldn’t defend the male personally, he could at least replace the male’s means to do it himself. He was thanked for the gesture. He had never been thanked for anything before. It felt weird.

He retrieved his hat from the floor and was immediately reminded of how the human male had ruined it. It made him angry again, but not angry enough to do anything. Perhaps he was simply irritated rather than angry. Nonetheless, he placed the hat back on his head and moved to leave the room.

T-00 paused when the human male made a quiet sound, like he’d started to say something but then thought better of it. The Tyrant turned to face the male once more. He noticed for the first time how bright blue the male’s eyes were. They were a reflection of his own eyes in that moment, confused and despondent and conflicted. But they weren’t empty like his own. They were anything but empty. They were full of life. They were warm. Pretty, even.

And that just made T-00 feel even more empty as he forced himself to turn away and stomp back out of the room, closing the door behind him.

He’s just been roaming the halls since then. It’s been a while. Hours, probably. He slams open another door. Empty. There were a few times when he thought he’d found another survivor to kill, but it always turned out to be the same human male from before wandering around trying to find a safe way out of the building. T-00 ponders how frustrating it must be to have to solve puzzles and find keys just to get around whereas he can simply break down doors and shatter walls to get past any obstacles in his way.

T-00 followed the human male for longer than he would like to admit. He made sure he never got close enough for the male to see him, though. He just observed from a distance. He noticed how the male’s mannerisms changed every time T-00’s footsteps crossed into audible range. It wasn’t afraid, per say. It was more neurotic than anything. He also noticed that the male was surprisingly sharp-witted and fast-thinking. He made progress quickly, although he often overlooked useful resources as a result.

Sometimes T-00 lingered in empty rooms after the human male had exited them in hopes of picking up the male’s faint scent. It isn’t the scent of hormones, the sweetness of arousal or the bitterness of fear. It’s much more subtle than that. Incredibly distinct. Maybe a little salty. It’s the underlying scent of the male himself, his pure essence. T-00 likes it a lot, perhaps more than he would like to admit.

T-00 wanted to get closer, to learn more about this human male that made him feel so good and so horrible at the same time. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. So he kept watching from a distance, trying not to think about how much his misplaced intrigue for the male was distracting him.

Maybe he was also trying to ensure that the male stayed safe, overcome by a growing desire to _protect_.

No, no, of course not.

He slams open another door. Empty.

T-00 forced himself to leave the male alone and go do something else eventually. He saw a human female around at one point, walking obliviously out of the S.T.A.R.S. office. It wasn’t the same human female whose faded scent lingered in the small office, though. This one smelled completely different. He tried to grab her so that he could take out all his frustrations by wringing her neck. She escaped too.

He’s really out of it today.

He opens another door with less enthusiasm. Empty. He’s starting to grow frustrated checking the same rooms over and over and finding nothing every single time. There has to be _someone_ around here to destroy. Maybe he should just move on and start looking for the G-

The ominous silence of the RPD is suddenly broken by the bell tolling in the clocktower, and the sound fills T-00 with a tiny spark of excitement. If someone set off the clocktower, maybe there’s finally another survivor here to mercilessly hunt down. He walks out of the room and stomps in the direction of the main hall, hoping to catch whoever is responsible for the noise on their way out of the clocktower entrance. That excitement, however, is quickly reduced to more frustration when he reaches the library.

It’s just that fascinating human male again.

Still, following the male around is better than wandering around aimlessly like he’s been doing. He watches quietly, hidden, as the male makes his way to the first floor, heading toward the basement. T-00 follows just out of earshot, which is a considerable distance due to just how loud his movements are. The male passes through the parking garage to enter the prison, leaving a few dead zombie dogs in his wake. T-00 stops to investigate the carnage. There is no scent of the male’s blood, so he must have gotten through the tussle unscathed. Surprisingly competent for an average human.

T-00 steps into the prison. He knows the entrance is also the exit, so if he waits somewhere around here, he should see the male again on his way out. He steps into an annex corridor where he can remain unnoticed.

He stands there for a while, wondering what the human male is even doing in here and why it is taking so long. He then begins to worry that maybe a zombie or some more dogs found their way in here too and ambushed the male deeper in the prison. The male has already displayed his competence, though. T-00 tries to reassure himself. Surely the male is fine.

…But what if he isn’t? Maybe he should go check…

T-00 stops. What… What is he even doing right now? He’s standing around doing nothing to accomplish his assignments, acting completely out of line and wasting time just because he wants to admire from afar and protect some worthless human male that he should have killed ten times over by now. Now he’s even worrying about the male. Is he out of his mind? Is he really just going to stand here and allow his internal flaws to proliferate, all because of some meaningless sexual encounter, all because of meaningless pleasure?

No, his design isn’t flawed. It can’t be. This pleasurable memory, this longing to protect, this desire for intimacy, it means nothing to him. It’s nothing! It’s nothing in the shadow of his horrific potential, his destructive purpose! He doesn’t need pleasure! He was made to kill! His prey is meant to fear him! That’s all he needs, the scent of fear and blood and death! He doesn’t need some metal stick in his brain to remind him what he’s supposed to be doing! He already knows what he’s supposed to be doing!

This confusion, this frustration, this doubt, this _emptiness_ , it has gone on much too long now, and it hurts, and he needs to put an end to it! This is his chance to put an end to it!

He isn’t flawed! He isn’t weak! He’ll prove that he isn’t! This human male doesn’t mean anything to him! He – no, _it_ – is just a pathetic, weak, worthless, tiny _insect_ that needs to be exterminated for daring to try to manipulate him, to make him doubt his design, to make him question his purpose! He’ll kill it! He’ll kill it without a single hint of remorse, a single microsecond of hesitation! He’ll paint the walls with its blood if that’s what he’s supposed to do!

The darkness of the main hall is suddenly drowned out by red emergency lights as an alarm blares and the locked doors of the prison rattle open, releasing any zombies stuck inside and attracting any zombies still wandering around outside. T-00’s attention is drawn to the sound of the gate at the end of the annex corridor unlocking, then opening, all accompanied by frantic footfall.

The human male skids to a stop just inches into the corridor. He and the Tyrant make eye contact. The male immediately spins around and runs right back out the way he came in, fear in his face.

Good. That’s exactly what he should be doing. Running. Afraid. Like the filthy insect that he is.

T-00 tries to ignore the pain in his chest from calling the male a ‘filthy insect’.

T-00 stomps down the corridor and emerges in the main hallway. He finds that the human male has already pushed his way into a crowd of zombies without shooting any of them enough times to knock them down, the reckless behavior fueled by an obvious panic. T-00’s first instinct is to tear apart every last zombie in the hall for daring to hurt his human.

 _His_ human? No. No no no. That’s not right. Where did that thought even come from?

He quickly shakes away that flawed train of thought in favor of tearing apart the zombies for daring to steal his _kill_.

With the sweep of an arm, T-00 throws a handful of the zombies against the wall, clearing the path to get to his prey before any individual zombie can. He watches with regret – no, no, _satisfaction_ – as the human male grows more frantic, hardly even bothering to fight any of the zombies, simply throwing himself through the onslaught, staggering away from the Tyrant in utter horror. One of the zombies pulls him down by the leg, and his gun goes flying from his hand with a single accidental shot that just barely whirrs past T-00’s head. T-00 stomps over, pushing the rest of the zombies out of the way so that he can bring a boot crashing down against that particular zombie’s spine. A satisfying crunch reverberates through the sole of his boot. He glares down at the male, building up to squash him next. But the male still has some spark left in him, and he pushes himself back to his feet and sprints down the hall, retrieving his gun in the process. He doesn’t look at the Tyrant even once, seemingly averting his gaze with a conscious effort.

He probably feels betrayed now that T-00 is trying to kill him again, even after what transpired. T-00’s chest tightens. It hurts.

No, no, it’s satisfying. It’s supposed to be satisfying.

T-00 stomps through the prison after the human male, but his target remains frustratingly out of reach. He thinks back to the human he killed through the wall in the back of the prison, and an idea strikes him. He doesn’t need to close the distance. He just needs to take a shortcut. As the male disappears through the door at the end of the final stretch of corridor, T-00 hones in on the sound of his footsteps on the other side of the concrete wall, footsteps that are growing closer, closer…

At just the right moment, T-00 throws himself against the wall, sending chunks of concrete and a cloud of dust flying into the parking garage as he breaks through. He watches with what he convinces himself is a sadistic satisfaction as the human male stumbles and immediately freezes in place from the sheer shock of the Tyrant’s entrance.

_An insect. A filthy insect. Squash it._

T-00 reaches out to grab the male around the neck, to lift him from the ground and hold him in the air like a trophy kill and crush his throat and watch as he struggles and squirms and eventually stops moving and _finally dies_.

But just before T-00’s hand reaches the male’s throat, the dust settles just enough to see more clearly, and T-00 makes the mistake of looking into the male’s eyes.

They’re still such a pretty blue.

They’re also full of crippling fear.

T-00 can’t convince himself that the look is satisfying. Rather, it just makes him feel sick. He pushes himself to reach the rest of the way, but his hand is frozen in place, unwilling to continue. He can’t do it. He physically can’t bring himself to do it. He’s trying so hard to just forget his worthless thoughts and feelings and memories, but he can’t. If anything, the thought and feeling he’s been trying so hard to push away is just getting louder and louder with each tense second.

He doesn't _want_ to hurt him.

He’s just been lying to himself, hasn’t he? He really, truly is flawed in some detrimental way. He can’t deny the strange fondness he feels for this male that made him feel something other than pain for the first time in his existence, an existence that seems more and more pointless the more he thinks about it. He has a purpose, yes, but again, what is the driving force behind that purpose? Why does he follow orders without question? Why does he deny himself of thought and feeling? What does he get out of that? Nothing, that’s what.

But sparing this human male, even going a step further and keeping him safe, protecting him, _pleasuring_ him… There was something good to be obtained from that. There was reciprocated pleasure. There was reciprocated release. There may have even been some deeper connection in the short moment that their eyes locked, sharing the experience of confusion and despondence and internal conflict, but also sharing some paradoxically distant intimacy.

Now that their gazes are locked once again, T-00 despises the fear he has put into those trembling eyes, thick condensation preventing him from seeing through those windows to a strangely attractive soul. He wants to wipe away the fog, to be granted a clearer view.

Could there be a fulfilling purpose in earning that view, somehow? Could there be freedom in that?

How can he want freedom if he doesn’t even know what it is?

T-00 lowers his hand without a sound. He watches closely as the fear in the human male’s eyes softens, replaced by both relief and confusion. The male opens his mouth to speak, to ask something. Once again, T-00 thinks about how nobody has ever spoken to him so softly. Nobody other than this one human. It makes him feel warm.

There really is something fundamentally wrong with his design, isn’t there?

He doesn’t even get the chance to register those softly spoken words, however, because there are suddenly blinding headlights glaring into his face accompanied by the sound of an engine starting.

And then there is pain.

A massive, heavy object slams into T-00 with incredible force, driving him into the concrete hard enough to crunch the front of the object and send cracks rippling through the wall, pinning him in the middle. He tries to move, to push back, but his body won’t respond through the excruciating sensation of shattered ribs. He attempts to groan in pain, but it hurts to force the air out of his lungs, so he stops. It’s so dark, whatever is crushing him blocking his view of the garage, but more importantly, of the human male. He can feel his arm sticking out from between the object and the wall. He tries to move his fingers, to relay some unspoken message to the male, but his fingers won’t respond either. He closes his eyes, already feeling the uncomfortable sensation of the T-virus trying to mend his bones.

He hears what sounds like a car door, followed by the clacking of heels, and he pieces together that he was struck by a vehicle. He hears the human male’s voice. Sweet. Warm. It is now accompanied by a female voice, probably coming from the person with the heels, the person who hit him. Her words are aggravated and cold. He doesn’t like that she is speaking to the male like that. He despises that she thinks she ‘saved him’. He and the male were on the verge of an understanding, an understanding that his human doesn’t need to be afraid of him.

There he goes again. _His_ human. It’s an intrusive thought. Why does he feel so… _possessive_?

T-00 snarls at the thought of the mutual understanding being stripped away from him. The rising frustration fuels his returning strength, and he manages to lift his arm and push at the vehicle. It creaks slightly as it rolls back a few inches, relieving the pressure against his torso that was making it so difficult to breathe.

_BANG!_

The sound of an explosion rings through the garage, and everything hurts again. But now the pain is worse. It’s so hot. It burns. It’s _so much worse_. He tries to push at the vehicle more, to writhe out of this torment, but he can’t seem to coordinate himself due to the all-encompassing feeling of being on fire, of melting skin and burning muscles. His limiters are fireproof, at least, so he won’t sustain enough damage to induce the intense mutations that would strip away his rational mind and reduce him to animalistic aggression, mutations that he was once so neutral about but now finds himself dreading. Still, as long as this fire is burning, he isn’t going anywhere. He’s trapped here in the hot, agonizing flames.

He can still hear the sound of the two humans’ voices, but he can’t make out what they’re saying anymore. His gut wrenches when he realizes they’re getting more distant. Leaving.

_Wait…_

He hears the shutter raising. He hears the footsteps getting further and further away. What if… What if he can’t find them again? They could end up anywhere in the city. What if he never gets to see his human male again? Or worse, what if the next time he sees him, he’s _dead_? His breath quickens. He tries to reach out his arm again, but he can’t. An imperceivable groan vibrates in his throat, and he doesn’t even care how desperate and pathetic it sounds. The only reply offered to him is the stillness of the parking garage, the pattering of the rain outside, the crackling of the fire surrounding him. The relative silence is so much more painful than the burning could ever hope to be. Alone. Empty.

_Don’t leave…_

_…_

_Please…_

_…_

_…_

_Come back…_


	5. A Good Life

Leon might have thought twice about helping Ada if she’d told him up-front it would involve wading through sewage, getting chased by giant alligators, and then wading through even more sewage. Ada hasn’t said anything about it, but he knows he smells like shit. And burnt reptile guts. His clothes are still sopping wet. He’s fucking freezing. As if that wasn’t enough to give the universe a good laugh, Ada doesn’t look or smell like she’s gotten a single drop of anything on her this entire time. Her beige coat looks like it’s fresh out of the dry-cleaner’s, not like it’s been worn through the zombie apocalypse.

Honestly, Leon can’t even call this the zombie apocalypse anymore. This is just a monster apocalypse at this point. Lickers, undead dogs, building-sized sewer gators, tumorous eyeball mutants, the Tyrant-

Leon frowns. He’s been trying not to think about that last one, because it still kind of hurts to do so, even though he knows it shouldn’t.

Stupid goddamn wet dream.

Ada finally opened up to him on their trek down here, telling him all about how Umbrella has had its hand in Raccoon City’s jurisdiction almost as long as it’s been building its urban infrastructure. She finally revealed a tangible goal: finding Annette Birkin, the Umbrella researcher who is directly responsible for unleashing this virus that turns people and animals into monstrous abominations.

Leon has never felt so accomplished just by earning another human being’s trust before. Ada still speaks sharply, coldly. But it isn’t like before when her words always sounded either irritated or aloof, nowhere in between. Now she’s actually willing to engage in conversation with him instead of telling him off for daring to ask a question. She almost seems concerned at times, telling him it isn’t too late for him to turn back and leave the investigation to the big leagues in the FBI. He’s inclined to think it’s patronizing. It might be something else entirely. But whether it’s patronizing or not, he wishes he could stop perceiving it as such. There’s finally some kind of human connection between the two of them, and that’s all that matters.

Still, Ada’s story leaves Leon with even more questions. If Umbrella is apparently engineering viruses and selling them for use in bioweapons development, wouldn’t it be in their best interests to _not_ unleash such a virus and cause a mass outbreak that would draw media attention and government investigators such as Ada? It seems foolish. Perhaps it was an act of spite or revenge from Annette. Perhaps it was an accident. Either way, Leon is determined to help Ada take Annette down, and hopefully take down Umbrella Corporation as a whole afterward.

They do make a damn good first aid spray though.

Leon pushes open another door as Ada’s footsteps clack close behind. He wonders how much further they’ll have to go before they get to this secret underground facility. Maybe the place will be heated and his clothes will finally start to dry a little faster. He’s still so fucking cold; he’s going to get hypothermia at this rate. He’ll probably still smell like shit even after he dries, though. It’ll take a dozen showers and a hundred loads of laundry to get rid of this stench. On second thought, these clothes should probably just go straight in the garbage when this is all said and done. He might keep the RPD vest though, a nice memento of what could have been. Only if he can get the smell out, though.

“Definitely William’s handiwork…”

Leon goes into high-alert at the sound of a woman’s voice beyond the half-opened door. He pushes it open the rest of the way and points his gun, and he finds a blonde woman in a lab coat crouching over a dead zombie.

“Identify yourself!” he commands. She doesn’t even glance up at him, much too focused on examining the corpse. He notes the dark circles under her eyes, the small wrinkles faintly present on the stress-areas of her face. She’s pale and ever-so-slightly disheveled. She might as well be a zombie at this point.

Ada steps into the room behind Leon and immediately draws her gun. “Annette Birkin.”

Leon glances at Ada with surprise. “She’s who we’re looking for?” Ada said Annette is incredibly dangerous. This woman just seems… tired?

“Not much time…” Annette mutters, still paying no mind to the two guns pointed at her. Either she’s incredibly oblivious or incredibly iron-willed. Or incredibly delusional. She slowly pushes herself to her feet, making no moves of either offense or defense. “Need to dispose of it…”

“We’re here for the G-virus!” Ada declares, stepping closer.

Annette finally turns to face the two interlopers. She scoffs with a disgusted half-smile. “That’s not gonna happen.” The way she speaks, the way her facial muscles move, she seems on the verge of breaking while still coming across as incredibly collected. Leon finds it unnerving.

Ada takes another menacing step forward. “I’m warning you, doctor.”

“Oh yeah?” Annette reaches behind her to retrieve something.

Leon braces for her to draw a weapon. “Hey!”

She doesn’t draw a weapon though. She instead throws down a match, igniting the body she was just examining. Using that as her distraction, she turns and books it around the corner.

“Stop!” Ada’s voice rings out as she gives chase.

Leon tenses as multiple gunshots fire, the bullets ricocheting off the metal pipes on the wall. Annette does have a gun after all. “Ada!” he calls out. A sudden panic overwhelms him when he sees Ada’s arms instinctively move up to cover her face.

No, enough of this bullshit! He refuses to witness yet another person getting killed because of this mess! He runs forward to push her out of the gunfire with no regard for his own safety. His body makes contact with hers, and the two go tumbling out of Annette’s aim, but not before a searing pain lights up the entirety of his left shoulder.

Leon lays on the floor as Ada jumps back up to her knees, firing her own bullets at Annette as the scientist disappears behind an industrial door. “You’ll never get the G-virus!” With Annette’s parting words, the massive door slams shut, locking her in the temporary safety of the sewer facility.

Leon groans as shock fills his veins with adrenaline. He’s been shot. He’s been fucking shot. He doesn’t even have the mental capacity to contemplate how this is going to affect his and Ada’s plans. The pain is too intolerable, worse than anything he’s ever experienced, worse than getting tased back in the police academy, worse than that time he fractured his ankle in elementary school, worse than the gashes from that licker, worse than getting clocked in the shoulder and strangled. His vision is white with pain. His arm might as well have been cut off. Why couldn’t she have shot the Kevlar or something!?

He’s hardly aware of Ada getting to her feet beside him, staring at the closed entrance despondently. “Didn’t expect that from a scientist.” She looks down when Leon groans in pain again, twisting his body to hold his shoulder. She crouches down beside him, and he notices that her sunglasses are missing. They must have gotten knocked off when he tackled her to the ground. Being able to look into her eyes after all this time is comforting. He also notices his blood staining her coat. The fact that him getting shot was what it took to soil the thing… It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. Ada places a hand on Leon’s arm, her eyes wide. “Leon…” He’s shocked by the shift in her tone of voice. She sounds… genuinely concerned, genuinely hurt. It isn’t patronizing. It’s just… worried. Catching a glimpse of her humanity is a long-awaited respite amidst the blinding pain of the bullet wound.

Leon knows what needs to happen now. He’s in way too much pain to keep going without being dead weight. But if Ada is going to catch Annette, she’s going to have to act fast. Leon doesn’t matter at this point. Bringing Annette to justice, avenging all the people who were killed in this mess… that’s what’s important. “Forget about me…” he starts, giving Ada the most sincere look he can muster through the agonized grimace on his face. “Just go… Stop her before she gets away…” Ada doesn’t say anything, but the way she looks at him indicates that she reluctantly agrees with his reasoning.

He drops his head back to the ground with another groan. The pain is so unbearable that he finds his mind starting to grow fuzzy, his consciousness fading in and out. He won’t be able to keep it together much longer. Telling Ada to leave him… He wonders if he just sentenced himself to death. If he doesn’t bleed out here, a zombie will probably find him instead and feast on his unconscious body. A free meal without any fight.

His awareness gets one last jolt, however, from the sheer dread of hearing the worst sound he could possibly imagine right now heading through the two rooms he and Ada just came through.

_Thud. Thud. Thud._

It’s still alive!?

“You’re kidding me…” Ada mutters, and Leon can hear both frustration and panic underneath her otherwise coolly spoken words.

Leon reaches up with his good arm and grabs Ada by the wrist. “Ada, you have to run.”

“I can’t leave you _now_!” She reaches down to try to pick Leon up, but he just winces and groans as the pain rippling through the left side of his body intensifies.

_Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud._

“Go, Ada! It’s too late, just leave me!”

_Thud. Thud._

Ada looks around frantically. For the first time Leon has seen, she seems at a loss as to what to do. It shocks him a little. Since when did he mean anything to her? She’d been trying to brush him away like an obnoxious housefly as recently as a few hours ago.

“Ada! Please! Run!”

Finally seeming to make up her mind, Ada jumps to her feet. “I… I’m sorry!” she hisses, her distress evident in the way her voice cracks. Then she turns on her heels, runs toward the fan vent on the other end of the corridor, does something that Leon can’t see from his position laying on the floor to overload the fan rotors, climbs the ladder, and vanishes into the ventilation tunnel. As the sound of her footsteps disappears down the shaft, Leon just prays that she manages to succeed in her mission, that she at least makes it out of here alive. Even if he won’t be there to help. Even if he won’t even be alive to see the outcome.

_Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud._

Leon still doesn’t understand why the Tyrant hesitated before, but there’s no way it’ll do that again. There’s no way it isn’t going to end him for real this time. He’s already halfway there anyway, blood pouring from his shoulder, his entire body shaking with the onset of hypothermia. He tries not to remember how much he previously found the horrendous thing to be weirdly attractive. He tries not to acknowledge that he might _still_ find it attractive.

Because now it's going to kill him.

It’s a strange feeling to know he is going to die before it actually happens. In all his previous near-death encounters, the shock and fear and horror managed to mask the existential nature of such finality. But laying here on the ground simply waiting for his death to come to him, unable to run away, unable to fight back, knowing that there won’t be any loopholes this time, he feels like he has all the time in the world to come to terms with it all.

He tries to take comfort in the knowledge that he lived a good life. A short twenty-one year life, but a good life. He’d hoped to help more people through his police career, but there’s no doing anything about that now. At least he experienced the accomplished feeling of graduating from the academy, proved his competence to the world. And he’d say he was a good person. There are no lingering guilts for him to take to the grave. No grudges. No regrets. His death will be because of a selfless attempt to save countless innocent lives. If there’s a heaven and a hell, well… he’d like to think he deserves the better of the two.

Still, that doesn’t stop him from dwelling on a certain emptiness. He didn’t actually accomplish anything in the grand scheme of things. Ada would have gotten down here just fine without him. And this bullet he took might not have even hit her anyway. He couldn’t save Marvin. He couldn’t save Elliot. He couldn’t save Claire. He couldn’t save Kendo’s daughter.

Who’s going to care? Who’s left to care that he’s gone? Ada has much more important things to be worrying about, surely she won’t dwell on his death for long. Even if Claire makes it out on her own, the total amount of time he spent with her probably wasn’t even upwards of an hour, so it isn't like she'll think too much about him. He doesn’t have much family, and not any that he’s close to. His friends are more just drinking buddies than anything else. With how un-invested he is in the romantic side of his life, he doubts any of his ex-girlfriends will even notice his name in the mass obituaries that will inevitably be published in the country’s newspapers.

Did any one of them ever love him? He isn't so sure, now that he’s stopping to ponder it. The relationships never got very far, after all, but that’s his own damn fault. Or maybe someone did love him, and he just never realized it because it wasn’t mutual and he’s a dense moron. Regardless, he certainly never got to love someone _back_. He never got to experience that comfort, that sense of purpose and belonging, the warmth of being in someone’s arms and genuinely _wanting_ to be there.

No harm done, but no harm averted, either. No accomplishments. No differences made. Nobody to care.

He lived a good life. He was a good person. But he’s got little to show for it, and now he just feels hollow all the same.

_Thud. Thud. Thud._

His body lacks the energy to even shiver at this point. His vision gives in to the darkness creeping in at the edges. He’s tired. He feels so cold. So alone. Everything hurts. He tries to hold it back, but a few tears manage to push past his eyes and slide down the sides of his face to his ears. He latches onto the only comfort he can think of as his consciousness fades into nothing.

At least…

...At least he won’t be awake when it all ends...

* * *

_..._

_..._

_...Urgh… what… what happened…_

_...Ada… where’s Ada…_

_..._

Leon’s eyes slowly flutter open, and he winces as light floods his vision. He rolls his head to the side and grumbles, drained and disoriented. He tries to focus his vision.

_Where…?_

When the meaningless lights and colors start to come into focus, he realizes that he has no idea where he is. This room is much larger than the corridor he passed out in, and the wall across from him has a large window. There are a few chairs, a few tables, a television, a storage box, a whiteboard, a phone, a typewriter… Some kind of office? How did he get here?

He remembers being shot, he remembers writhing on the floor, he remembers the corridor shaking from the stomping of heavy footsteps, he remembers telling Ada to run…

How the hell is he alive right now?

Leon’s brain reels as it tries to piece together what could have happened while he was passed out. The Tyrant _had_ to have found him. There was no other path for it to take, and he was laying right in the middle of the corridor, his presence as plain as day. Maybe… Maybe it thought he was already dead? Or it knew he was going to die anyway? That must be it. It must have passed him by, more interested in tracking down Ada, deeming a human that was already going to bleed out and freeze as nothing more than a waste of time.

That explains how he isn’t dead, but how did he get here? Ada must have come back for him once the coast was clear and dragged him to this room to keep him safe. She doesn’t appear to be here anymore, though. Maybe she went after Annette again. Leon is thankful that Ada cared enough about him to double back and help him, but that could have allowed Annette to get away, and he feels a little guilty for making Ada allocate her priorities like that and potentially compromise her mission.

Ada… He has to find her. He has to help her complete her mission, help her take down Annette and find the G-virus. He has to thank her for saving his life a third time. Three times… Looks like he’s keeping count for real now.

Leon takes a deep breath. Now that he has regained awareness of his surroundings, he starts to regain awareness of himself. He remembers being cold… so cold…

He’s… warm now, though. Very warm. He looks over his shoulder and sees that there are two large consoles covered in monitors and switches behind him. One of them is shut off completely, but the one he finds himself leaning up against has been powered on. It lets out a low hum as the lights on the buttons flash meaninglessly, and Leon realizes that the idle machinery is generating an ambient warmth that he can feel through the metal panel against the bare skin of his back. His clothes are draped over the console as well to help them dry.

Wait… _What!?_

Leon looks down at himself and finds that he is no longer wearing his familiar RPD uniform. In fact, beneath the handful of spare workers’ shirts draped across his body in a haphazard attempt to keep him warm and protected, he isn’t wearing anything at all.

_Did Ada undress him!? And just leave him here naked!?_

Leon tries to reason things out before his heartrate skyrockets from embarrassment. It makes logical sense that she would do that. He was soaked and freezing, and he needed to be out of those clothes so he could get warm and dry. She had no choice. But still! He runs a hand over his face, trying to push away how awkward he feels right now. He can’t believe she had to do that. Maybe she was respectful and didn’t look at anything she wasn’t supposed to look at. He’ll just have to hope that’s the case until he can find her again and confront her about it.

He starts to push himself up to get dressed, and the resulting ache in his shoulder reminds him of the bullet wound. He brings a hand up and finds that his arm and shoulder have been cleaned and bandaged. Ada must have used a first aid spray on it or something, because it feels worlds better than before. He looks around to see if he can spot the discarded can, and that’s when he finally notices the bizarre scene surrounding him.

There is supplies scattered across the floor, but perhaps ‘scattered’ isn’t the right word. Rather, it is all organized into little piles, and he moves to rummage through the materials to make some sense of it all. There’s a pile for combat supplies containing two boxes of shotgun shells, a combat knife, four containers of various gunpowder, three boxes of handgun ammo, and a single grenade. There’s another pile for medicinal supplies containing two blue herbs, a red herb, and a green herb. There’s a third pile that isn’t really a pile but rather a single hip pouch set aside from everything else. And finally, there’s a fourth pile of… snacks?

There are a few snack bars, a few single-serving chip bags, a pack of beef jerky, a couple bottles of water. There’s even a pack of gum? Why would Ada bother to leave him all this food? Why would she go out of her way to get it? He isn’t starving by any means, and it’s way more than he could eat at once. Gum isn’t even edible in the first place, it serves no purpose in the goddamn zombie apocalypse.

Leon realizes there’s technically a fifth pile as well, but he hesitates to call it that, because he’s part of it. He’s swimming in snuggly cotton fabric. The floor beneath him is covered with more spare shirts, not only enough to keep his ass off the cold hard concrete, but enough to be weirdly comfortable. It’s almost like a little nest. Leon snorts at the strange thought. Ada really went out of her way to make sure he’d be alright here, didn’t she?

Leon isn’t about to turn his nose up at the first food he’s had the chance to eat all night. He rips open the jerky and devours it, not realizing until the first flavorful strip hits his taste buds just how hungry he is from all this exertion. He eats a snack bar too, chugs one of the water bottles. Once he’s satisfied, he redresses in his dried clothes. He presses the shirt up to his nose.

Yep, still smells like shit.

He puts his equipment back on over his uniform, then begins allocating the contents of the other piles into his pockets. It’s a lot, so he’s thankful for the addition of the hip pouch. He even has space to pocket another snack bar and the pack of gum in case he wants them later.

God, he feels so much better now. Ada is a life saver. A three-time life saver.

Leon is suddenly struck with a recollection of his final thoughts before he drifted into what he presumed would be his eternal demise. He’d tried to reminisce about the good life that he lived only to experience overwhelming discouragement at his general insignificance to others. He assumed that Ada would forget about him quickly, but she didn’t. She came back for him. She risked her life for him. She risked her mission for him. She helped him recover, she left him all this stuff. You don’t do those kinds of things for people you don’t care about.

He smiles faintly. Someone cares.

Ada is a very attractive woman. She dresses very nicely. She’s skilled, she’s intelligent. And she cares about him in her own distant way. He isn’t sure if it’s platonic care or something more, but if it _is_ something more… certainly he can find it in himself to care back in an identical manner. After everything they’ve been through, trying to save the city together, saving each other’s lives… After the way she said his name as he bled out on the floor… Maybe… Maybe he has a chance with her? Maybe she’s finally the one who can make him feel something?

Leon tries to dig deep, to unearth some hidden feelings that he might have for the FBI agent, even something superficial like lust. He plays the sound of her gently saying his name over and over in his head, envisions her attractive face, imagines the feeling of her soft hair between his fingers…

…

…

…

Nothing.

Leon mutters a curse under his breath. Ada is literally perfect, an ideal that any woman would kill to be. And yet there is nothing, not even when he thinks about how she literally undressed him. She’s perhaps a friend at this point, and he does care about her in that regard. But that’s it. There’s nothing else beyond that.

But the goddamn _Tyrant_ somehow does things to him?

His brain must be broken or something.

There's no time to worry about such issues right now, though.

Feeling a little frustrated with himself, Leon walks across the room to the huge window overlooking some kind of garbage pit. It’s difficult to see through the cloudy glass, but he’s still able to make out most of the room. His eyes scan over piles of trash, then stop when he sees a figure in a familiar beige coat.

_Ada!_

Leon can’t tell if there’s anything physically wrong with her from here, but it’s obvious enough that she’s unconscious. How did she get down there? What happened to her? She must have fallen in after she left him in this room. Did she have another run-in with Annette that ended badly? Leon frowns deeply; he despises that scientist more and more with each passing second.

If Leon listens closely, he can hear something behind the closed doors leading to the waste management room. The faint roaring and yelling isn’t reassuring at all, and he knows he needs to get to Ada before whatever is in waste management does. He owes her his life, and the least he can do to repay her is save hers in return.

It’s going to be really weird talking to her again, though, considering that she saw him naked…

Leon shakes off the thought and looks to the left to find a map of the facility taped crookedly to the wall. He tears it from its place and examines it, and based on the shape of the room he’s in and its proximity to the garbage room, he deduces that he is in the monitor room. It looks like he can get into the garbage room through the hall leading off of this monitor room… but he’s going to have to pass through waste management on the way. Because _of course_ he has to get past whatever horrible thing is making all those noises. _Of course_ it can’t be easy.

He proceeds into the next section of the monitor room only to find that the door leading to waste management is sealed shut. While part of him becomes even more frustrated at this inconvenience, another part of him is a little relieved to not have to face the mystery horror just yet. He looks around the room for any indication of a switch to open the door. It seems to be connected via a mess of wires to various panels on the walls, some of which contain electronic components shaped like chess pieces but others of which are empty. He walks over to the end of the room to see if he can find any information on the long table or the board on the wall, and sure enough, he finds a document resting on the table’s surface.

> _I lost the thing that tells you how to unlock the door to the U-Area during that last mad dash of a transfer. I know you have to stick one plug into each terminal, but if anyone remembers which plug goes where, please be a pal and share by posting the info on this board._

Leon doesn’t like where this is headed. He looks up at the postings on the board wearily.

> _Pretty sure the rook and knight are on the same wall and the bishop and queen aren’t next to each other. The queen and rook were opposite each other, too._

Leon’s stomach drops at the confirmation that he’s going to have to go on yet another hunt for electronic parts to get past yet another unjustifiably puzzle-based obstruction. It can never, ever be easy, can it? This city and absolutely everything in it is ludicrous.

Leon sighs and heads for the door leading to the treatment pool. Those electronic parts aren’t going to find themselves, and there’s no time like the present.


	6. Cold

As the flames lick at his colorless skin, T-00 can feel his internal body regenerating, the virus laboring away to repair shattered bones and bruised organs. When the flames finally die out, it takes several minutes longer for T-00’s external body to recover, for burnt skin and muscle to heal back to its usual strength and appearance. He doesn’t move the entire time. He knows that if he moves too much, the healing process will take even longer, maybe mess something up, and it will just slow him down in the long run.

But he wants to move, he’s desperate to move. His entrapment by the flaming van has only served to accelerate the growth of his strange intrigue with the human male. Perhaps it has evolved beyond a curious intrigue at this point. It has developed into painful obsession. The seed of worry that was planted in his head by the male’s departure has sprouted into a deep-set anxiety that is eating T-00 alive. He wants to make sure the male is okay. He _needs_ to make sure the male is okay. He needs to be following, watching, protecting. _He needs to regain that sense of control_.

He can’t believe how badly he’s breaking from the mold because of one insignificant human male. His handlers would be so disappointed.

But he’s beyond caring at this point. He’s had plenty of time to think during his painful recovery, and he’s decided that pursuing the male is his new objective, assignments be damned. Umbrella has only given him pain, and this male has given him something else. Having never wanted anything before means he isn’t quite sure how to regulate that want, though, and he’s perfectly content to just let it consume him if it means he has some purpose beyond being obedient.

There's definitely something wrong with him.

But again, he's gradually stopped caring so much.

He isn’t sure why he wants the male so badly. He isn’t sure what he’ll even do with the male when he manages to catch him again beyond affirming that mutual understanding of ‘I’m not going to kill you’ that was cut short before.

Well, he knows what his primitive instincts are telling him to do. He knows what he _wants_ to do. But it’s completely foreign to him, still incredibly hazy beneath the conflicting messages of his modified genetic programming telling him to be obedient, telling him that thinking and feeling is both unnatural and undesirable. He never even knew about 'hand-copulation' or 'sex etiquette' or anything else beyond the concept of functionally reproductive intercourse before the male showed him. There’s probably a lot that he still doesn’t understand about this male’s strange courtship rituals and mating behaviors and all the associated expectations, so maybe blindly taking more pleasure isn’t the best idea. Yet.

When he breaks that desire down into its components – the desires to understand these mating behaviors and fulfill the male’s expectations, to _earn_ him – he realizes that he is fundamentally desiring to engage in something akin to a courtship ritual of his own. That, alongside the feelings of possessiveness, protectiveness, and hunger, makes him wonder… Is he considering taking this male as a _mate_?

…No, of course not. That’s _definitely_ not part of his programming. He’d have expected Umbrella to remove such primal needs.

He doesn’t know what this is.

But he has a powerful drive to figure it out.

The van groans mechanically as T-00 pushes it away from the wall, finally freeing himself. A few more pieces and parts fall off the vehicle as he gives it an unnecessary final shove of frustrated retribution for inflicting so much physical pain and keeping him from his human. The sorry state of the thing as the only remaining door falls off fills him with a subtle satisfaction.

T-00 had feared that locating the male again would be next to impossible. The city is sprawling, after all, and the rain has washed away the male’s pleasant scent. But it turns out that deducing the male’s path is incredibly simple. The street outside the parking garage cuts off abruptly at a construction zone, and while T-00 is confident he could jump down to the zone several meters below without a hitch, he doubts a normal human could do that without breaking its legs. The male and his female company must have taken a different route. A quick observation of the area reveals one of the shops has its doors left wide open, and it’s easy enough to figure out that this is the alternate path the humans chose. T-00 glances up at the bright red writing above the shop. He doesn’t know what it says, but if the neon blue outline of a handgun is anything to go by, it must be an establishment for selling weapons.

T-00 ducks under the doorframe and stomps through the building, noting how violently ravaged the place is. Humans turn into such animals when they’re afraid. It doesn’t matter how depleted the stock is, though. He doesn’t care to use weapons. He’s a good enough weapon on his own.

He exits the back of the shop and continues down the single viable route laid out by the barriers of the construction site. He jumps down over a few abrupt ledges that should have been much more manageable than the massive ledge from before for the normal humans to traverse. Some of the construction platforms creak precariously under his weight, but thankfully none of them break. The route leads him to a large sewer tunnel, and it immediately becomes clear to him what the humans’ objectives are. They must be aiming to locate the underground sewage facility via the sewer entrance.

Easy. He has the entire underground infrastructure of Raccoon City mapped into his mind, a necessary aspect of his training for his assignments.

He’s quicker from thereon out, and for several reasons. For one thing, his familiarity with the route means he doesn’t have to constantly stop and analyze where he’s going. He’s also driven by the aching desperation to make up for the time he’s wasted, to close the distance between himself and his human. But most prominent is the fact that the sewers smell horrid to his highly sensitive nose, reeking of dead bodies and excrement, and he wants to get out of it before it has the chance to seep into the leather of his limiters.

The potent stench also continues to prevent him from picking up the scent of the male, even without the rain. And that is incredibly frustrating. T-00 almost feels starved for it.

He eventually reaches an elevator, and he steps inside with an evident nervousness. It’s not an industrial freight elevator or even a standard lab elevator, it’s a flimsy back-entrance passenger elevator. It isn’t exactly meant to carry a lot of weight. And he’s a lot of weight. Hopefully it doesn’t snap from the exertion and plummet down the elevator shaft. Not that that would kill him or anything. But it would be inconvenient and probably painful.

The gate closes, and the elevator begins its slow descent to the facility entrance. After an agonizingly slow journey, it hits the bottom of the shaft with a little shake, and the gate slides back open. T-00 steps out into the room, feeling a sense of relief to be out of the contraption. He’s a Tyrant, he isn’t afraid of things. But perhaps elevators make him a bit… uncomfortable.

There isn’t much more ground to cover before he reaches the facility entrance, just these last two rooms. He makes his way through the passage and notes the open doors. The two humans must have come through here already. The facility is much less linear than the sewers, so they’ll be more difficult to track from here. But now that the stench of the sewers is behind him, maybe he can hone in on the male’s delightful scent again.

When T-00 ducks through the last door, however, he realizes that his search will be much more short-lived than expected, and not for any reason he would have ever wanted.

The male is laying on his back on the concrete floor, one arm folded over his chest and the other sprawled out at an uncomfortable-looking angle. The upper left portion of his uniform is soaked in dark blood. His eyes are closed. A violent dread rushes over T-00’s being as he stomps over to the body.

_No…_

T-00 crouches down to examine the horrible scene before him. There’s an obvious gunshot wound in the male’s shoulder, still leaking warm blood. His face looks like it was just recently contorted in unbearable pain, the skin around his eyes wet with tears. His complexion is horrifically pale. T-00 feels sick when he is struck by the fear that the male might be _dead_. He reaches out a massive hand and places it gently on the male’s chest, and to his relief, he can feel the faintest rising and falling of shallow breaths. He moves the hand across the male’s uniform, noting that it is soaked in water that reeks of sewage. It’s so cold that he can feel it sapping the heat from his hand through the leather of his glove.

He reaches down and wraps his hands around the male’s upper back, gently lifting the lax body against his broad chest. Pressing his face into the bare skin of the male’s neck proves just how frigid and clammy he is, perhaps dangerously so. That pleasant scent of the male’s underlying essence is so disconcertingly faded. T-00 can’t even appreciate how oddly warm the proximity to the male makes his own body feel. How can he enjoy that warmth so selfishly while the male is so cold?

T-00 clenches his hands into fists against the male’s back as he tries to choke down the anger building inside him. This is his fault for not being here to protect the male, leaving him to succumb to injury and coldness and pain and fear. What is he supposed to do now? He was made to kill and destroy; this is completely outside his training and his protocols. He needs to do _something_ though. He supposes that bullet wound needs to be cared for, for one thing. The male needs to be taken somewhere warm and dry, as well.

Then, an idea strikes him: NEST. He’ll take the male to NEST. There will be supplies there, and warmth, and perhaps a room that can serve as a safe space for the male to recover.

T-00 looks down the corridor only to find that the door into the facility containing the cable car to NEST has sealed shut. He feels a surge of frustration. He can break through a lot of barriers, but that giant industrial door definitely isn’t one of them. Further inspection of the corridor reveals a vent tunnel large enough for even his massive form to navigate, a tunnel that should lead him where he needs to go if his internal map is anything to go by. He gently places the male back on the ground and stands to approach the vent.

It’s high off the ground, only accessible via a small metal ladder. T-00 supposes he could climb the ladder while holding the male if he really tried hard enough. Something tells him his dexterity won’t be the problem, though, but his weight instead. He experimentally places a foot on the bottom rung, and the width of the boot nearly takes up the entire bar. He grabs a higher rung with a hand and pulls himself off the ground.

_SNAP!_

The instant his other foot lifts from the ground, the rusted bar holding the ladder into the wall breaks, and the top half of the ladder literally crunches under his weight, permanently barring its use by even a normally-weighted human.

Great. There’s only one other way into the facility from this location, and it’s going to require him to wade through sewage. He despises the idea of that smelly human excrement water seeping under his limiters.

But the idea of the male dying because of his negligence is even worse. Wading through sewage is a sacrifice he is willing to make.

T-00 returns to the unconscious male and lifts the limp body back into his massive arms to cradle the fragile form against his chest. He’s so small, so light. Well, not really. He’s an average size for a healthy human male. But that doesn’t make him any less small compared to T-00’s inhuman physique. T-00 is able to hold the male’s entire body comfortably with a single arm. He feels warm again, holding the male like this. That possessiveness from before flares in the back of his mind.

T-00 heads for the small lift at the end of the corridor that will take him up above the facility. It’s less enclosed than the elevator and appears to be surprisingly sturdy, but it makes T-00 nervous nonetheless. He squeezes aboard and activates the lift with his free hand, and it rises to the upper levels. Once there, he stomps down the corridor and down the stairs to the room overlooking the water gate.

He stares down into the murky waters below, the stench of sewage once again hitting his nostrils. His hatred of the smell almost makes him reconsider this mission, to turn around and use one of the other entrances to NEST throughout the city. But then the male twitches slightly in his grasp, his unconscious body using what little energy it still has in a futile effort to shiver off the cold, and T-00 realizes that he doesn’t have time for that. It is enough to spur T-00 onward, and he steps over the side of the gate to drop into the sewers below.

Coldness washes over his legs as he hits the water hard, resulting in a large splash that stirs up the horrible scent even more. Thankfully the water isn’t able to soak through his tight limiters, and it only comes up to just above his knees, but he can still feel how freezing it is through his pants and boots. He holds the male tighter against his chest to avoid him getting even more wet and cold.

T-00 begrudgingly begins his journey through the upper waterway, trying to hold each breath in longer than usual so that he can minimize exposure to the horrendous smell. At least there aren’t any zombies down here for him to fight off from trying to steal the male from his grasp. As he emerges into the larger chamber, however, he sees a few zombies stumbling around behind the railing on the upper balconies. Looks like he’s going to have to do some cleanup regardless.

He treads to the end of the waterway and steps onto the dry stairway leading up to those zombie infested halls. He barely makes it a few steps before a zombified worker pushes itself up from its position on the floor and lunges at T-00, sensing the uninfected male carried in his arms. T-00 grunts with annoyance and grabs the zombie’s head in one hand. It explodes under the pressure of his grasp, covering his glove with brain matter. He shakes his hand to throw some of it off, wiping the rest on his trench coat.

He continues up the stairs, across the balcony, and down the opposite stairs to the back section of the upper waterway, dispatching a few more zombies along the way by shoving their heads against the walls hard enough to split them open. There are several locked doors, but he doesn’t bother to break them down. All he cares about right now is getting to the cable car and getting to NEST.

T-00 steps back into the sewage to make his way toward the lower waterway, the last stretch before he can stay on dry land for good. He travels through the large passage, dodging around huge piles of garbage, until he reaches the slope leading deeper into the sewers. He’ll have to slide down it, and he has a feeling getting the disgusting water higher up on his limiters is inevitable. He can’t let himself lose balance though. Otherwise the male will go toppling into the sewage, and he can’t have that.

Bracing his legs and holding the male tightly with both arms, T-00 shifts his weight over the slope. His body slides down the decline, leaving a massive wave of water in his wake, until he touches down on the lower level. He stumbles slightly, dipping down into the water such that it reaches his upper thighs, but he quickly corrects his stance and regains balance before any additional damage can be done. Thankfully the male stayed safely in his arms the entire time, and that’s all that matters.

As T-00 continues down the waterway, he can’t help but feel like something is wrong. Despite how many workers should have been down here when the outbreak escalated, there aren’t a lot of zombies here, even counting the ones that were in the previous corridor. Where have they all gone? Are they simply somewhere else in the facility? Perhaps the garbage processing room? The treatment pool?

He stops when he spots something massive shifting down the waterway behind the masses of garbage, but it disappears before he can get a good look at it. That definitely wasn’t a zombie. Too big, too loud. He proceeds down the waterway with caution. He has no doubt he can take out whatever mutated creatures may be lurking down here, but he knows from his training that an unknown enemy with the element of surprise on its side should not be underestimated.

He stops once more when the creature comes back into view, lurking partially below the surface of the water. T-00 huffs. Does it think it’s hiding? He can still see it. The mutations must have compromised its cognition, whatever it is. Regardless, it is blocking his way, and he’s going to have to slip past it somehow. Surely he can destroy it if it attacks. He shifts the male back into one arm to free his other arm for combat, then approaches the fleshy mass.

The creature immediately shifts upon his approach, rearing up out of the water to lash out with a massive claw. T-00 stumbles back, just barely missing the attack. A horrifically disfigured head on an elongated neck whips around as the creature groans threateningly. When it stands up to its full height to wade through the water toward T-00, he realizes just how massive it is, perhaps even bigger than a Tyrant. Its biology is completely nonsensical and asymmetrical, and a huge pus-filled growth throbs on its left shoulder.

T-00 takes another step back, hovering over the male defensively. This thing isn’t T-virus, this thing is G-virus, and while that may not lend much to its intelligence, it does lend to its unpredictability. T-00 realizes that it will be incredibly risky to fight this thing close-range, especially with one arm incapacitated by something that he is desperately trying to keep safe from things like this abomination. His eyes dart around the waterway in search of a way to get past the creature without fighting it to the death, but its body is so wide that it takes up the entire passage.

The creature stumbles closer before leaning its head down and spitting something out of its serrated face. The object splashes down into the sewage, and T-00 can see it swimming toward him beneath the surface of the water. He plunges a hand in and grabs it just before it reaches him, then pulls it out to examine. It appears to be a larva of sorts, and it violently lashes at his leather sleeves with flailing tendrils in a pointless attempt to escape his grasp. He crushes it without a second thought.

He feels something strike his thigh, and he looks down to find another one of the disgusting little parasites attempting to burrow into his limiters. Even with its adaptations for digging deep into host bodies, it appears to be having a rather difficult time. T-00 reaches under the water and crushes this one as well. Though it seems that they can’t damage him, they could definitely infect his human male. Thankfully they don’t seem capable of jumping far enough out of the water to reach the vulnerable body in his arms.

Unfortunately, what the larvae lack in direct damage, they make up for in distraction. T-00 looks up just in time to see that the G-zombie has gotten much too close, and it strikes him hard with its tumorous arm. T-00 falls back into the sewage, soaking himself up to his chest in the foul water, but more significantly, soaking the male even further. The G-zombie senses the male’s accessibility and spits out another two larvae, and they wriggle through the water toward the viable host.

T-00 is suddenly filled with a rage stronger than all his previous frustrations and annoyances combined. How dare this waste of DNA subject his human to even more of the watery frigidity already sucking away at his life force? How dare it try to parasitize his human, _steal his human!? How dare it try to hurt him!? The male is his, and this thing can’t have him!_

T-00 lashes out and grabs one of the larvae, crushing it before it can reach the male. His eyes then lock on the second one, but just as he manages to catch it, the G-zombie lunges forward and grabs him with its massive arm, pulling him and the male toward the gaping teeth-filled maw that has emerged from its face. T-00 quickly meets that mouth with a heavily thrown punch, and he feels his entire arm slipping down the thing’s pulsating throat. It’s warm and wet and disgusting, and T-00 quickly releases the larva into its parent’s gullet, then rips his hand back out. His limiters are dripping with saliva and pus all the way up to his shoulder, and it actually evokes a strong repulsion in him. He’s never been disgusted by biological material, otherwise he wouldn’t be cracking open skulls on such a regular basis. But this thing… It’s on a different level than that, somehow.

Choking on its own offspring, the G-zombie flails its head in an attempt to dislodge the larva stuck in its throat. T-00 takes advantage of this opening to throw a punch at the tumor on its shoulder. His fist breaks through the outer layer of skin, splattering his forearm with sickly yellow pus. He fights through the revulsion and grabs at the skin to yank at it, ripping the flesh from the creature’s body, and T-00 can see a massive eye hidden within, an obvious point of vulnerability.

The G-zombie recovers before T-00 can attack the eye, however, and throws him back with its claws hard enough for it to hurt. It dives under the water, then lunges again to grab him a second time before he can shake off the pain of the last hit. T-00 doesn’t have anything to choke it with this time, but he attempts to punch down its throat anyway in hopes of choking it manually. The slimy neck once again envelops his entire arm, and overcome by the pure abhorrence of having to do this a second time, he manages to dig his fingers into the slippery skin deep inside the creature’s throat. He pulls as hard as he can, and the G-zombie lets out an agonized roar as he literally rips a hole in its neck from the inside and pulls the flesh out through its own hideous face.

T-00 suddenly feels the male’s body straining against his grasp, and he looks down to find that the G-zombie has latched onto the male’s arm with its vestigial limb and is attempting to pull him forcefully from T-00’s protective embrace.

T-00 immediately loses himself to a raging possessiveness that surges through him. His gray lips pull back in a vicious snarl, an action that he’s never felt even vaguely compelled to do in his entire existence until this point. He grabs that limb and yanks it hard, snapping the skeletal structure within before ripping it straight off the G-zombie’s body. It roars with violent fury, but T-00 lashes out to silence it, grabbing the wound he left in its throat and tearing into it even further. The creature writhes in his grasp, desperately attempting to throw him from its body, but he just latches on harder. Alongside the combined force of his determined grip and the G-zombie’s struggling, T-00 throwing his weight back is enough to rip through the rest of the creature’s throat, snapping its vertebrae and wrenching its neck from its body until the grotesque head is left dangling by a single remaining flap of skin and sinew.

It attempts to let out a horrendous shriek, but the sound just gurgles out with gushes of blood and pus from the hole left behind by the partial decapitation. T-00 immediately goes for the eye again, grabbing it so hard that his fingers break through the cornea with a sickening _shlick_. He attempts to pull the eye from the flesh, but it’s embedded too tight, so he switches to pressing his fingers in as hard as he can. He can feel the eye’s tendons twitching as they try to rotate away from the source of the pressure, but he just pushes in the opposite direction, harder and harder and harder until the eyeball finally bursts with a loud pop that sends more pus flying in every direction.

Forcing himself to hurt the human male back at the RPD wasn’t satisfying in any way. But killing this disgusting thing? Very satisfying.

Killing this thing is also much more impressive than killing a weak human, especially considering that he did it all with one arm. He'd previously contemplated just how weak he is because of his growing fondness for the male, succumbing to emotions and physical pleasures and personal desires. But after being spurred on to slaughter this thing by this rage... Maybe his interest in the male is actually incentivizing him to be even _stronger_. It's a reassuring thought.

He might be broken. But he definitely isn't weak.

With a final gurgling groan, the creature collapses and disappears beneath the surface of the water, its blood flowing out to color the sewage bright red. T-00 quickly steps away and runs his entire arm through the normally-colored water to rinse the blood and pus and saliva from his limiters. He didn’t think he’d ever want to wash himself in sewage, but when the choice comes down to that or being covered in G-virus slime, he’ll take the sewage any day.

He looks down at the male still held against his chest, and the rage that has built up within him gradually starts to die back down as he is instead filled with the instincts and calm brought about by the sight. He pulls the male tighter against his body and presses his face into the male’s frigid neck with a comforting purr. He knows it isn’t actually offering the male any comfort, considering the unconsciousness. But the protective instinct is strong, and he feels compelled to perform the affectionate act anyway.

 _Safe_. _Keep him safe. Protect._

It isn’t much further to dry ground after that. T-00 proceeds through the final stretch of the waterway and up a small flight of stairs before he finally emerges through a metal door into the cable car tunnel. He stomps up the stairs and finds that the only way into the control room is via another ladder that has no chance of supporting his weight. He’ll have to jump over the balcony to the boarding dock below. It’s an inconvenience, but a shortcut nonetheless. Carefully bracing the male against his chest, he kicks the railing of the balcony hard enough to break it, creating an opening for him to jump through. He steps over the edge of the platform and lands on the dock below with a heavy thud.

The cable car is locked up tight, only accessible via an appropriate ID wristband. That’s fine; T-00 expected that this would be the case. He never planned to take the cable car anyway. He’s perfectly capable of walking down the tunnel to get to NEST, although that will inevitably take much longer, even with his long strides. He turns to head for the stairs leading down to more railing that he can kick in to access the track.

The male’s body gives another harsh shiver, his shallow breath catching as his muscles violently constrict, and T-00 pauses to look down at him. The color has drained from his face even more, to the point that his lips are starting to look vaguely blue, and T-00 fumes at the memory of that G-zombie knocking him into the water again and exacerbating his growing hypothermia. If T-00 takes the tunnel at this point, the male probably isn’t going to make it.

Why are humans so frustratingly fragile? And of all the things for him to grow obsessed with protecting, why did it have to be something of that frustratingly fragile nature?

Change of plans. T-00 is going to have to make do with whatever he can find right here in the sewage facility. The problem is that none of the rooms here are likely to have any good ambient heat, considering that this is just a sewage facility. Perhaps he can warm the male some other way? He recalls from his time in Umbrella’s labs and training facilities that idle machinery tends to give off a lot of heat. There’s supposed to be a monitor room across the water treatment pool, right? That seems to be the best option right now, so T-00 turns around and heads back up the stairs, past the cable car, and into the treatment pool room.

Just when he thinks this can’t get any more inconvenient, T-00 sees that the walkway across the treatment pool is currently set to the upper level, and a quick assessment reveals that the switch to lower the walkway is on the opposite balcony, which he can’t access without lowering the walkway first. What an awful architectural decision.

T-00’s eyes scan the massive room, looking for any other way that he can get across. There are a couple metal pipes leading from the pool into the wall next to the opposite balcony, a smaller one on the bottom and a larger one on the top, and he quickly formulates a strategy. He’ll set the male down over here, break the metal railing, jump down into the pool, climb up to the opposite balcony via the pipes, flip the switch to lower the walkway, cross back over and retrieve the male, and finally take him to the monitor room. Yes, that sounds easy enough. Ridiculously inconvenient, but easy.

T-00 crouches down to place the male gently onto the floor, but he hesitates. He’s quite fond of this ongoing proximity, and he doesn’t particularly like the idea of leaving the male over here on his own even for a few minutes. He glances around, looking for anything that might threaten his human while he’s not here to protect him. He sees no signs of zombies or any other B.O.W.’s in the room, though. And he knows that if he doesn’t act, the male will die. Reluctantly, he slides the male from his arms, leaving his body resting against the wall. He immediately feels empty again, but he shakes it off.

He turns to the railing, grips it with both hands, braces his feet, and pulls with enough force to bend the metal back and create an opening through which he can easily jump into the pool. He does just that, and the water splashes up around him again. It’s still freezing, and it comes all the way up to his chest this time, but at least it doesn’t reek of sewage. He wades through the deep water until he reaches the other side, then reaches up to grab at the smaller bottom pipe, his hands massive enough to wrap around the entire thing and give him a decent grip. Even still, it’s slippery with water, and he stumbles a few times before he manages to pull himself up.

The pipe creaks horrendously, threatening to snap under his weight. Ignoring that, T-00 raises a leg over the horizontal segment of the pipe to straddle it. The pipe jerks violently as a few bolts snap out of place, and T-00 nearly falls back down into the water. The thought occurs to him that his hat could fall off doing this, and if it does, there’s no way he’s going to be able to drop back down into the pool to get it back and then climb up the pipes again without breaking them, stranding himself down here while the male freezes to death. If he loses the hat, he’s just going to have to leave it.

It is a meaningless thought, but it irritates him for some reason. He’s kind of grown to like the hat. Is he developing personal tastes in _fashion_ now too?

He really is falling apart at the seams.

He moves as quickly as he can to push himself up and wrap his arms around the much larger pipe above. Just as he manages to do so, the smaller pipe gives out beneath him. Thankfully he manages to hold on to the larger pipe, although his legs are left dangling in the water that has started to gush forcefully out of the broken line.

T-00 tries to stretch his legs out far enough to get a sturdy foothold on the concrete ledge of the balcony, but he wasn’t exactly built for dexterity, or at least not the dexterity required to climb and maneuver through pipes like some kind of arboreal primate. He tries to swing his body to get a little closer, but he nearly loses his hold on the slippery metal in the process. He gives it one more attempt though, swinging his weight just enough such that the toe of his boot catches on the concrete ledge. With a steadying breath, he works his arms around the pipe and slips his head underneath it so that he is holding it from the other side.

He’s only got one shot at this, so he needs to make it count. Bracing his arms and his leg, he pushes himself as hard as he can from the surface of the pipe. He throws his arms back behind himself as soon as the balcony railing comes into range and wraps his gloved fingers around the chain-link fencing for dear life, and through some blessing of skill and luck, it holds. He finds good footing on the ledge with his other foot, then carefully spins himself around to face the railing, pushes himself over the top of it, and drops down onto the balcony.

He doesn’t want to admit to doubting his abilities, but he was honestly starting to think that that wasn’t going to be possible and that jumping into the pool was the worst mistake he’d ever made. But here he is, standing right next to the lever that will lower the walkway, and he almost feels a sense of pride at the accomplishment.

T-00 throws the switch, and the mechanisms to lower the walkway loudly activate. He watches as it moves ever so slowly until it locks into place with a clang, and he quickly strides across to the original balcony where the male is waiting. T-00 picks him up again and holds him close as he turns and walks back to the opposite balcony, where he shoulders his way through the metal door leading into the monitor room.

T-00 immediately concludes that this was a good decision. The room is calm, quiet, well-lit, and full of big metal consoles, just as he had hoped. After closing the door to keep any zombies out, T-00 strides over to the consoles and gently places the male on the floor in front of one of them. After a quick scan of the rest of the room to make sure there aren’t any threats lurking anywhere, he returns to the consoles and starts scanning them for any indication of how to activate them. Some of the buttons have markings on them, maybe letters, maybe words, maybe just symbols. He doesn’t know what any of it means though, and that feels incredibly frustrating.

Desperate, he simply starts flipping switches and pressing buttons until something happens. The trial and error approach yields no results at first, but one of the switches finally gives him what he wants. The machinery inside the console stutters momentarily before humming to life, and the buttons and monitors start flashing across the top panel. The lights flicker after a second, though, and the machine starts to stutter again as if broken.

T-00 grunts with frustration and gives the side of the console a hard kick. It dents the metal panel, but it also fixes whatever was wrong, somehow, and the stuttering stops. As the electronic components hum steadily, T-00 places the back of his hand against the side panel he just dented. It just feels like cold metal through his glove, though. Hopefully this wasn’t a waste of time and it will warm up after a few minutes.

T-00 starts to pace the room looking for any equipment that might serve as useful in tending his human back to acceptable health. There’s an empty jug, a box of bullets, a hardhat, some garbage strewn across the floor. Nothing useful except for the bullets, at least not at first sight. He notices that the jug and the bullets are sitting on some kind of metal table, and pulling the table away from the consoles reveals a drawer. He yanks it open and finds a few clean shirts, perfect for helping the male get warm and dry and comfortable. T-00 immediately takes them, revealing a small stash of unidentifiable items that were hidden underneath. He sets the pile of shirts on the floor and starts to dig through the items in an attempt to identify them.

The items are all crinkly and shiny and colorful, except for one that is a small flat cardboard box of equal colorfulness, and T-00 realizes that they are various packages of some sort. He can’t read the labels to determine what they contain, so he tears into one of the crinkly ones experimentally, and his nose is immediately struck by a smell that is so horrible that it nearly makes him wince. Closer examination reveals that this particular style of package contains some kind of rectangle made of what appears to be heavily processed grains. He realizes that it is food, and the smell is the pure-sugar syrup holding the granules together.

Who in their right mind would eat something so sickeningly sweet?

He glances down at the male. Is this really something regular humans eat? There’s no other reason it would be here other than for human consumption, so he supposes it is. He huffs and throws the food down into a pile on the floor, knowing that the male will need sustenance once he wakes up. He’d much rather leave the male with _good_ food, though. But the only meat around here is rancid and zombified and human, and that won’t do. This unappealing sugary concoction will just have to suffice for now.

T-00 looks around some more and notes a storage box. He steps over and opens it, and it contains several more clean shirts, as well as two bottles of water. He retrieves these as well, then marches back to the male and adds them to their respective piles. With a grunt of approval, he leans down again to touch the side of the console, and he is relieved to finally feel a comforting heat.

He quickly gets to work, grabbing one of the shirts to dry the male with. He stops, however, when he realizes just how soaked the male’s clothes are. There’s no way he’s going to be able to dry them just by wringing them with thin cotton shirts. He supposes the smartest course of action to get the male warm and dry as fast as possible is to unclothe him. It will leave him much more vulnerable, but that isn’t a problem as long as T-00 sticks around to protect him.

With an uncertain gentleness, T-00 reaches out and starts to remove the outermost clothing and equipment from the male’s body: the guns, the hip pouches, the vest, the padding, the shoes, the fingerless gloves. He throws it all into a pile off to the the side, as the combat material doesn’t need to dry very much. He removes the male’s socks as well, throwing them up onto the top of the console to help them dry faster. Next is the police uniform. He unbuttons the dark navy shirt, finding the task incredibly difficult with how thick his fingers are but managing after some struggling, and he drapes it over the console next to the socks.

His fingers grip the hem of the male’s gray undershirt and pull the fabric up his body until it slips over his head and his arms slip from the sleeves, and the undershirt joins the rest of the clothes on the console. T-00 turns back to the male, and he pauses. His eyes move across his bare torso and all the details of his lean muscle. It is completely different from the massiveness of T-00’s own muscular chest and abdomen, but it still looks competent, strong.

T-00 reaches out a hand and places his palm flat against the male’s chest. He can feel the weak rising and falling of his breaths, but his heartbeat is too faint to detect through the thick leather gloves. T-00 pulls his hand back, feeling a strange dissonance. Before he knows what he is doing, he’s unstrapping the glove on his hand and reaching out to touch the male again, warm gray skin against freezing pale skin, and the male’s pulse is suddenly so clear.

_B-dm. B-dm. B-dm._

T-00 is taken aback. It is so… calming.

It is also incredibly slow, and T-00 immediately remembers that the male needs medical attention. He quickly pulls his hand back and puts the glove back on, scolding himself for being so easily distracted.

His eyes drift up to the bloody wound on the male’s shoulder. It’s still bleeding, and although it isn’t profuse, it is still significant. T-00 realizes that he doesn’t have any supplies to mend the wound with, but he supposes the male might. He reaches over to dig through the pockets of the male’s removed equipment, and sure enough, he finds some gauze and a single first aid spray. Although he has never had to perform first aid before, nor has he ever received even the most basic training in it, he is confident that he can figure it out. He picks up one of the shirts and uses it to wipe as much of the blood away as he can, then shakes the first aid spray and points it at the bullet wound, spraying until the can is completely depleted. It already looks much better than it did before, but it’s still bleeding, so T-00 starts to wrap it with the gauze. He also notes the ragged and wet gauze already wrapped around a previous wound on the male's arm, so he removes the dirty material and replaces it with fresh bandaging instead. Once he’s satisfied, he pulls back to examine his work.

Yes, that’s definitely better.

He returns the gauze to the male’s pockets, mindlessly throwing in the empty first aid spray as well. He then turns back to the male and reaches for the zipper of his pants to remove what should be the final article of clothing. Once he unzips the zipper and pulls them down the male’s legs, however, he is met by something unexpected: more pants inside the pants. Secret pants?

Well, they aren’t exactly _pants_. They’re too small for that. They could be called shorts, maybe. Secret shorts. T-00 is confused regarding their purpose. So far the male’s clothing has mimicked his own limiters: undershirt, uniform (trench coat, in his case), pants, and shoes. The only differences so far have been the male’s socks and lack of a hat. These mini-pants are just unfamiliar, though.

T-00 places the pants over the console, then turns his attention to the old gauze wrapped around yet another wound on the male's leg. He retrieves the clean gauze again and replaces this bandaging as well, using up the rest of the roll. Now, to deal with the weird mini-pants. He supposes their purpose doesn’t really matter at the moment, since they are also soaked and need to be removed to allow the male to get fully warm and dry. He reaches out and starts to pull them from the male’s hips, then pauses upon revealing the fragile genitalia they were just covering.

It looks different now. Softer, smaller. That was to be expected, of course, considering the blatant lack of arousal. Still, it brings back memories of the pleasure from before. It makes T-00 wish the male was awake so he could do to T-00 whatever it was that he did before _again_. But as long as the male is unconscious, he isn’t going to be receptive, and therefore he isn’t going to be reciprocative either. T-00 grumbles. He feels like he’s stuck in his own heated skin again, but there’s nothing he can do about it this time.

Then again, the male had been touching _himself_ in the beginning. Is it possible to do the weird hand-copulation-thing _without_ a partner? He stares down at his own gloved hands contemplatively.

…

Doesn’t matter. He liked it when the _male_ did it. And there are more urgent things to tend to right now.

T-00 removes the mini-pants the rest of the way and adds them to the console. With the male completely undressed, T-00 takes one of the shirts again and starts to carefully dry his cold skin. Once that is finished, he throws the shirt aside. There are way more shirts here than he will need to simply cover the male’s body for warmth and protection, so he starts to take all the extra fabric and shape it into a nice little barrier to keep the male’s bare skin off the cold concrete. Once he’s satisfied with the makeshift seat of shirts, T-00 pulls the male back into his arms to place in the center.

With all the confounding scents of the sewer water and the clothes gone, the returning scent of the male hits T-00 as hard as that SWAT van did. As he lowers the male onto the shirts and leans him against the warm console, he finds himself leaning in as well, unwilling to withdraw his arms that are now wrapped around the male’s smaller body. He presses his face into the male’s neck again, and it’s the first time he gets such a clear experience of the scent, all the other times where he detected it lingering in the rooms of the RPD having been so faded and short-lived in comparison. He starts to purr again, unable to stop himself from making the strange noise deep in his chest. The uncomfortable hotness from before dissipates into a much more comfortable warmth.

It smells like…

T-00 tries to find the word to describe it. It smells good, yes, but again, it is different from the satisfaction of fear-scent or the allurement of arousal-scent. Rather, this scent smells how quiet sounds, how calm feels. It smells like comfort, like… belonging. Not how he ‘belonged’ in certain labs and holding cells at Umbrella, though. Rather, it smells like a place T-00 _wants_ to belong.

It smells like a home.

One of T-00’s hands moves up to the male’s head, and he starts to absentmindedly run his fingers through the dark blonde hair. He can’t feel how soft it is through the leather, though, and he wishes he hadn’t put his glove back on yet. He brushes his nose along the cold skin of the male’s neck. He isn’t sure why, but he brushes his lips along that skin too. It feels nice, and he finds that the calm closeness relaxes him more than he has ever experienced.

T-00 is suddenly struck by the fact that he hasn’t really thought about any of this in the long term. Sure, his self-determined objective is to keep the male safe from the other horrors in the city. But then what? If the male has any survival instinct at all – and he definitely does, if T-00’s observations at the RPD are anything to go by – he’s going to want to get out of the city once he recovers. Tyrants aren’t exactly subtle though. Where will T-00 be able to follow him to?

Will the male even _want_ T-00 to follow him?

T-00 feels a sudden tightness in his chest at that thought. Surely he can convince the male to want that. He’ll show the male why he should want that. He possesses such raw power and strength. He’ll destroy anything that tries to hurt the male. He’ll take the male to the mountains outside the city and hunt down _real_ food for him. Those are desirable things, right? Those must be very desirable to a human.

He can easily protect. He can easily provide. He can also easily _pleasure_ , apparently. Certainly all those things combined make him… desirable?

Desirable as… what, exactly?

_…As a mate…?_

T-00 realizes that that _is_ what he’s doing after all. Gathering food, offering protection, building a nest, _courting a mate._

The clarity of the revelation feels so strange yet so natural at the same time, completely foreign to his training and programming but completely sensible to his primal instincts. But despite that contradiction, it feels _right_ , and T-00 is certain that he can earn those same feelings from the male.

But he can’t wait until they leave the city to begin that courtship. There are too many variables that could get in the way. The male may pick an escape route that doesn’t involve going into the cover of the forested mountains, or he may run into that female again, or some other surviving humans. He might find a vehicle to escape with that T-00 doesn’t fit into. T-00 supposes he could just forcefully carry the male where he wants to take him instead, but humans are incredibly easy to frighten, and the male might not understand that T-00 is simply acting in his best interests rather than kidnapping him. No, T-00 needs to convince the male of his value as a mate, to show the male that he can protect and provide better than any other prospective mate possibly could, _here and now_.

He thinks back to the box of bullets still sitting on that metal drawer. If there are just bullets sitting around in this room, then surely there is more supplies just sitting around throughout the rest of the facility. Now that he thinks about it, he’s certain he passed by some herbs on the way here. He’s already checked the immediate vicinity, and there are no zombies of either T-virus or G-virus origins anywhere near the monitor room, so the male will be perfectly safe here even if he leaves for a little while. He’ll go scour the facility for every piece of useful supplies he can find, and he’ll bring it all back here to offer to the male once he wakes up.

With a newfound determination, T-00 pulls away from coddling the male. He gathers up the remaining shirts and places them attentively so that they cover the male’s entire body except for his head. _Warm and dry and comfortable and safe._

T-00 stands to his full height, but he lingers for a moment longer, staring down at the male. His lips aren’t blue anymore. His face isn’t contorted in pain. He looks peaceful, honestly. With a decisive huff, T-00 grabs the box of bullets from the table and sets them on the floor in front of the male, starting a fresh pile for weaponry. He then turns and stomps back out the door leading to the treatment pool room, ensuring that he closes it firmly behind himself to keep out any zombies that may somehow manage to find their way over here.

He knows this is a strange endeavor. And he knows that Umbrella will _decommission_ him if they ever find out he’s this deviant from his orders, this flawed and broken from his intended design. But he can’t find it in himself to care. He’s tasted independence.

And if he can’t have this independence, then maybe he’d rather be decommissioned anyway.


	7. Cognitive Dissonance

Leon rotates the bishop plug in his hand as his eyes dart between the last empty terminal and the sealed door. He’s positive he has this logic puzzle figured out and this is the place for the bishop to go, which means as soon as he puts the plug in its proper place, that door is going to open. On one hand, that’s a great thing, because he can finally get to Ada. On the other hand, that’s a horrible thing, because he’s going to have to deal with whatever was making a cacophony in waste management first.

The thing has been silent since he got back to the monitor room with all the plugs, though. He doesn’t like that.

Nonetheless, he knows he can handle this. All the stuff Ada left for him has him well-stocked with ammo and medicinal supplies. He found a shotgun stock in some safe with the combination lazily scribbled on the side. He isn’t sure how Ada missed that, but he found it nonetheless, so he won’t complain. On an even brighter note, he is now equipped with a flashy chemical flamethrower that he found in the storage room across the bottom waterway.

Speaking of the bottom waterway, Leon received a little boost of confidence in his combat prowess after clearing out the _things_ that were lurking down there. He doesn’t even know where to begin in the attempt to describe them, aside from calling them fleshy, pus-filled masses of everything horrible and disgusting. But he still managed to take them out, and he’s still here to tell the tale, and he’d like to think that counts for something.

He also nearly had to deal with another extremely unwanted encounter on the balconies overlooking the upper waterway. He'd gone there in search of the the only missing plug, the rook. And sure enough, he spotted it as soon as he stepped off the stairs, sitting in a terminal across the balcony. He should have known to be more wary as he stepped over several zombies who had their heads crushed in and walked past doors that had been busted off their hinges. Normally he would have checked all the rooms for supplies, but then he looked into one of those rooms and saw a familiar towering form cloaked in that familiar leather trench coat, and any thoughts of sticking around for any longer were quickly thrown out the window.

Leon was sure it would notice him as he stepped past the room toward the rook terminal. But through some incredible stroke of luck, it didn't notice him at all. It was much too busy standing with its back to the door and rummaging through the drawers of a desk. Leon had no idea what it could possibly be looking for, but he wasn't about to stick around to find out. He snuck as quietly as he could across the balcony, reached out, and removed the rook plug.

The mechanical sound of the plug-activated walkway raising up as a result of the plug's removal from the terminal frightened Leon so greatly that he literally threw himself over the closest railing and into the upper waterway below. He ended up completely under the sewage for a second, and when he emerged his hair was dripping and he had to wipe the foul liquid out of his eyes. But the disgust was a necessary sacrifice, in retrospect, because he could hear the Tyrant stomping around on the balcony above immediately afterward, searching for whoever or whatever had caused the sudden ruckus. Leon stood in complete silence for what felt like hours, not wanting to alert the Tyrant to his location with any sloshing and splashing around. And thankfully, after some time, the footsteps faded back into one of the rooms and ceased, and Leon carefully backtracked through the waterway without making a single sound.

The experience certainly gave Leon a rush of adrenaline, that was for sure. It was mostly panic and terror. But there was still a little piece of him that started to be aroused for the briefest moment, almost _wanting_ the Tyrant to find him. He pushed it down quickly, because he knew it was literal insanity to want that.

That doesn't matter now, though. What matters now is that he now has all the plugs in place except for this bishop, and there's only one way to go from here. With a deep breath, Leon gathers the courage to place the bishop plug in the terminal. Just as he expected, he’s aligned everything correctly. The pressurized locks unseal, and the thick metal door swings open, revealing a corridor bathed in foreboding red light.

It’s so quiet.

Leon steps over to the entrance and glances inside. He can’t see anything moving around in there. Maybe whatever was making all the noise moved somewhere else? Based on his map, he isn’t sure where else it could have gone aside from the main power room, but surely he’d still be able to hear it from such close proximity. Maybe it just keeled over and died somewhere? He isn’t about to put any money on that. Nothing here will die even with fifty bullets to the brain.

Cautious, he crosses the threshold into the unknown. Down a flight of stairs, around a corner, and he emerges in the corridor. After picking up some green and blue herbs on the ground, he turns around and faces the huge door leading to the garbage room. This is… surprisingly easy. Leon reaches out and pulls the lever to open the door, glad to finally be reunited with Ada after all this time.

And nothing happens.

Leon’s heart sinks when he realizes what the problem is. The lights are red because they’re simply emergency lights, meaning the main power supply in this area isn’t running. He knew this was far too good to be true. His nerves returning, he spins around and walks over to the door leading to the power room. Knowing his luck, he’s going to come face to face with the thing he heard before as soon as he opens this door.

Leon moves his hands between each of his weapons just to make sure they’re all in their proper place; handgun, shotgun, flamethrower. Yes, everything is in order. Even if there’s something horrible in here, he’s more prepared than he’ll ever be. Bracing himself, Leon reaches out and pushes his way through the door.

The room is empty.

Now Leon is just confused. There isn’t even a body in here. Where did that thing he heard go?

He supposes it doesn’t matter as long as it means he doesn’t have to deal with it. He picks up a red herb, then makes his way over to the electrical panel across the room. He flicks all the switches to on, but that just ends up giving him too many amps and too many volts to hit the target range.

_Why is everything here so goddamn inefficient to operate!?_

After a few seconds of fumbling, Leon is able to figure out the correct combination of switches to supply the correct amount of power. A loud beep resounds from somewhere, and the red emergency lights immediately shift to cold white fluorescent ones. That was surprisingly easy too, and Leon is starting to grow paranoid. There’s no way the universe is finally letting up on constantly trying to kill him. Even so, he can’t think of anything that could possibly get in his way at this point. It’s a clear shot to the garbage room now. Forcing himself to relax a bit, Leon turns and heads back toward the door.

_Almost there, Ada. Just hold o-_

_CRASH!_

Leon stumbles backward as his vision is obscured by dust and debris, and he barely makes out the shape of a massive fleshy arm adorned with long claws before it withdraws through the hole it just created by bursting through the ceiling.

“Jesus Christ!”

Leon prepares to make a break for the door, but it seems that the attack sparked something flammable, and now that entire corner of the room is ablaze. His eyes dart around in search of another exit, but the only other way out is a big metal door that he quickly finds to be locked. He’s come so close to his goal only to get trapped in a flaming room to burn to death… There’s no way he’s going to let it end like this. He starts scanning the tops and bottoms of the walls in search of a ventilation shaft, an unnoticed glass pane, _anything_ that can get him out of this chaos.

_CRASH!_

Leon is immediately thrown to the ground when the clawed appendage bursts through the ceiling right above him, just barely slicing through his wounded left shoulder before retreating again. He winces in pain, but he quickly forces himself back to his feet. His eyes starts to scan the ceiling frantically, following the sound of the creature moving around unseen. As it gets closer to him once again, he darts to the side, just missing the arm that comes crashing down. He raises his shotgun and attempts to shoot at the thing, but it doesn’t seem to do any substantial damage at all, and the arm simply withdraws into the ceiling again.

Leon continues to scramble around the room, narrowly avoiding the creature’s continued attempts to reach violently through the ceiling and impale him with fearsome claws. After a few more failed attempts, the creature must realize that this isn’t working, because Leon can hear the sound of it retreating across the ceiling. At first Leon hopes that it has finally decided to leave him alone, but that hope is destroyed as soon as he hears a loud thud on the other side of the locked metal door. With a roar, the creature slams into the metal from the other side, denting it enough to pry its claws between the door and the wall and tear the entire thing out of the doorframe.

The creature stumbles into the room, and Leon gawks at just how horrendous it looks, tumorous and fleshy and gigantic. As he gets a better look at it in order to aim and shoot his shotgun, he realizes with horror that this is the same man that he fought off underneath the RPD. It has the same yellow eyeball twitching around on its shoulder, the same ragged pants. But what remains of the man’s head has shifted even further down the creature’s chest, clearly not even functional anymore, replaced by a much more horrific looking head with crooked teeth and a single beady eye. Even one of the man’s arms seems to have fused to the tumorous creature’s body, curled up like the limb of a decayed corpse. It occurs to Leon that maybe this man isn’t simply turning into a mutant monster, he’s being _replaced_ by it.

Leon is struck by a burning pain on his good shoulder, and he looks behind himself to find that the fire is spreading and one of the embers has set his sleeve alight. He quickly pats it out with his hand, but his panic at catching on fire gives the mutant a perfect opportunity to lash out with that massive clawed hand. Leon is thrown forcefully to the side and strikes the wall, just barely missing being tossed into the flames. The creature throws its claws down at him again, but he quickly rolls to the side and scrambles to his feet, then books it down the hallway that the creature just inadvertently opened.

The sound of the mutated man roaring and charging down the hallway behind Leon spurs a new burst of adrenaline. Leon turns the corners of the hallway with incredible speed and precision until he reaches a ledge, and he leaps down to the the platform below without losing any of his inertia. He skids to a halt, however, when he realizes this is a dead end. He recalls from the map that this was the proposed water purification room, meaning that it was still under construction. He can see the passage leading back out to waste management, but what he is standing on is nothing more than a temporary construction platform, so there’s no feasible way for him to access it. He might be able to maneuver some of the steel beams laying around into a makeshift bridge to get across, but how the hell is he supposed to do something that requires such stability and precision when there’s a giant mutant hunting him down?

Speaking of, the creature has now made its way into the room, and it leaps down onto the platform with a loud thud. Leon knows he is going to have to incapacitate it somehow, but the odds are against him. There’s a massive storage crate sitting right in the middle of the platform, and it will be incredibly easy for the creature to corner him because of it. The crate has to go.

Leon’s eyes dart over to a control panel at the side of the platform, and he rushes over to it, smashing his hand down on the button. An alarm immediately sounds as yellow lights flash, and a crane system lifts the storage crate and begins to swing it away to the other side of the room, clearing the area. The creature immediately charges for Leon, and he barely jumps out of the way as it crashes into the stack of steel beams, knocking them all over the edge of the platform.

So much for the bridge plan.

Leon raises his shotgun and takes another few shots at the creature as it turns and lumbers toward him again, aiming for the eye that he knows to be its weak spot. After a few well-placed shots, it falls to its knees halfway across the platform, and Leon is struck by an idea. It’s a crazy idea, but it might just be the only thing that allows him to get out of this with his life. He scrambles past the creature back over to the panel and hits the button again, reactivating the alarms and lights as the crane starts to return the crate back to its original position, a position that the creature is now occupying like a sitting duck.

“Now I’ve got you,” Leon mutters. He watches as the crate slowly begins its return journey, picking up speed as it approaches. Just as the creature starts to stand again, the crate swings around the rest of the way and strikes it with incredible force, sending it hurtling over the edge of the platform. Leon’s gut wrenches, however, when the creature grabs onto the platform with its massive claw and hoists itself back up, ready for another go at tearing him to shreds.

“Come on…” Leon mutters as he hits the button again, sending the crate swinging away. This is obviously his best chance at survival, but if the creature is rational enough and quick enough to hold on like that every time, he’s fucked.

The creature lunges at Leon again, striking him hard enough to send him flying across the platform. Thankfully he doesn’t go hurtling off the edge, but he still hits the ground hard on his bad shoulder, and a pained shout falls from his lips at the resulting agony. He quickly pushes himself to his feet, but he’s wearing down fast. He might have lasted longer at the beginning of the night, but after all the injuries he’s accumulated, he’s fighting at a fraction of his full strength.

Leon raises the shotgun again with shaking arms, firing at the eye. He only gets in a few shots before the creature lunges and slashes again, nearly knocking him off the platform once more. Leon limps back over to the control panel, then turns and fires a few more shots. Thankfully that is enough to subdue the creature again, and it crumples back down to rest and recover. Leon’s hand slams down on the button, and the crane stutters back to life.

The creature starts to shake off its injuries and get back to its feet, the eye on its shoulder blinking open once again, but Leon isn’t having it. He quickly arms himself with the chemical flamethrower and lights the creature up with an onslaught of fire, and while it doesn’t seem to do much to keep the creature down, it does encourage it to pause and let out an infuriated groan. That hesitation is all Leon needs, and he watches with satisfaction as the crate slams into the creature a second time, praying to whatever god might be listening that the creature doesn’t hold on this time.

Unfortunately, the cosmic powers that be don’t seem to care. The creature’s bare feet skid across the floor as it grabs at the crate with its massive arms, pushing back against the force. Leon holds his breathe as the crate slowly wins out anyway, pushing the creature back just far enough for one of its feet to slip over the edge of the platform. It loses its footing and goes toppling over the edge, but it hooks onto the crate with its massive claw. Leon watches as it dangles precariously over the empty basin of the room that is so deep that he can’t see the bottom.

_Just let go, you ugly bastard!_

The creature doesn’t let go, instead attempting to aggressively climb its way to the top of the crate. The crate gives a sudden lurch, however; the creature is too much additional weight. With a loud snap, the cables holding the crate break. Several metal sheets and pipes on the ceiling above the crane arm are knocked loose from the recoil of the released weight, and both the creature and the crate plummet down into the darkness below with one last fading roar. Most of the metal pieces go plummeting down as well, but a few of them are big enough to catch between the platform and the far wall, forming a hazardous but traversable walkway to the previously unreachable passage in the most insane bout of luck Leon has ever witnessed.

Leon simply stands in the newfound silence for a moment and waits for his heart to stop pounding hard enough for him to feel in his own head. His shoulder is still in agony, fresh blood leaking through his bandages. His muscles are screaming from exhaustion. But he’s still alive, and he isn’t mortally wounded, and he has a way back to Ada now, and that’s all that matters.

Hopefully that mutant man will stay dead this time, too.

With a calming breath, Leon looks around the platform and picks up the sporadic combat supplies he didn’t have time to grab during the insanity. Once he’s picked up everything, he places a foot cautiously onto one of the metal sheets connecting the platform to the exit. To his surprise, it feels stable. He puts the rest of his weight on it, and it doesn’t even creak. Feeling a little more confident, he strides quickly across the rest of the debris and plants his feet firmly on the concrete walkway he knows for a fact will be stable. He struggles up the stairs and unlocks the door at the top, then reemerges in waste management. The doors to the garbage room shine like a beacon of hope just feet away from him.

Thank god. No more setbacks. No more goddamn monsters. Just rescuing Ada and getting on with the mission.

Leon pulls the lever decisively, and the door finally starts to open. He shuffles his feet impatiently, then slips under the door before it even has the chance to open all the way. He is met by piles upon piles of garbage, and it smells terrible. Not as bad as the sewers, though. Probably not as bad as himself at this point, either.

Leon stops at a small puddle of blood on the ground, panic welling up in him. “Ada!?” he calls. “Ada, where are you!?”

“Leon!?”

Leon lets out a sigh of relief. She’s alive. Leon rushes around the piles of garbage toward the sound of her voice until she comes into view. “Ada!” He rushes over, stumbling over a few loose pieces of trash. “I was getting worried there for a sec…” He trails off when he sees the reason Ada was incapacitated down here. There’s a metal shard jutting out of her right thigh. He crouches down to get a closer look.

Ada stammers slightly as she stares at him like she’s seen a ghost. “Leon… You’re alive?”

Leon glances up into her eyes and notes the immense confusion. She must have heard the commotion with the mutated monstrosity in the power room and assumed the worst. “Of course I am. I don’t go down that easily.”

“But the Tyrant-“

“It never found me down here,” Leon says with a shrug. “Finally, a miracle, right?”

“The fact that you woke up is a miracle all on its own.”

Leon scoffs. “Put a little more faith in yourself.” Ada narrows her eyes questioningly and opens her mouth to respond, but Leon thoughtlessly interrupts as he looks back down at her leg. “That looks really bad.”

Ada still looks like she wants to ask something, but she shakes her head and turns her attention to the injury regardless. “I can’t get it out…” she murmurs.

Leon shifts to one knee, feeling a little uncertain. Should he take out shrapnel this big? She could bleed to death. “I don’t know if I should, uh…”

“Just do it, I can’t walk like this,” Ada says, sounding frustrated, and Leon notes that she won’t make eye contact. Maybe she doesn’t like looking weak. Leon doesn’t think she looks weak, though. If anything, she’s impressively strong to be pushing her way through the excruciating pain such an injury must be causing.

Leon shifts uncomfortably again. If Ada can’t walk, then the shard has to go. But he’s still not terribly comfortable with the uncertainty of the consequences. “Okay… It’s gonna hurt.”

Ada doesn’t respond, so Leon reaches down and firmly grabs hold of the metal. After giving her a moment to brace herself, he pulls hard. The piece of metal slides out with a painful sounding squelch, and Ada grunts in suppressed agony.

“Hold on…” Leon searches through his pockets, knowing he put a backup antiseptic and a few squares of gauze somewhere. He eventually locates them and pours some of the antiseptic onto the fabric, then moves to press it against the wound.

Ada holds out a hand. “I can do it myself.”

Leon frowns at her. She definitely doesn’t like to show any weakness in front of others, he’s sure of that now. “Just relax, okay?” he replies, ignoring her outstretched palm and placing the gauze on the wound himself anyway. She retracts her hand and sighs with defeat, followed by several sharp inhales through her teeth from the stinging of the antiseptic. Leon finds an old strip of fabric, and he quickly ties it around Ada’s leg to hold the gauze in place.

“Look, Leon. I don’t know how you’re still alive right now, but… You can’t always be so lucky. Get yourself out of here. While you still can.”

Leon scoffs as he finishes tying the knot. “I’m not just going to leave you. Not like this.”

Ada shakes her head. “You don’t understand. The situation’s worse than I thought.”

“You’re not getting rid of me that easy. You protected me. Now it’s my turn.”

Ada looks at the ground. “Didn’t realize we were keeping score.”

Leon smiles and holds out a hand to help Ada back to her feet. Once she’s up, Leon turns to offer her some support. “Grab my shoulder.”

“Don’t push it, rookie.”

Right, weakness. That’s a no-go. “Ok, just trying to help.” The two of them start to stumble across the heaps of garbage back toward the corridor. “Watch your step.”

As the two walk, Ada turns to look at Leon over her shoulder. “You want to help? We have to get to the NEST.”

“NEST?”

“Umbrella’s lab. Right beneath us,” Ada replies, and Leon nods. That must be the lab Ben spoke of in his interview. “Annette let it slip. That’s where the virus samples are. You up for this?”

“Think I can fit it in my schedule,” Leon jokes with a half-smile.

Ada nods, offering another subtle smile back. “Come on. We’ve got work to do.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The two step out into the corridor and start to head back toward the monitor room, walking slowly on account of Ada’s injured leg. “The cable car will take us down to NEST,” Ada states. Leon begins to interject that the cable car requires an ID wristband to operate, but Ada holds out her wrist before he has the chance, and he notes the band adorning it. “This wristband’s our ticket to ride.”

Ah, of course she’s got that covered already. “Nice. Where’d you get that?”

“Borrowed it,” Ada states vaguely as they emerge back in the monitor room.

They pass through the section of the room containing the chess plugs and into the section with the monitor consoles. Leon’s gaze drifts back to the pile of shirts he woke up on, and he is suddenly struck by the same embarrassment he felt before upon realizing everything Ada had to do for him. He planned to confront her about it once, but now he wonders if he should even bring it up. He feels obligated to express his gratitude at the very least, but maybe she’d rather not acknowledge that it happened. He decides to thank her anyway, and if it seems like she wants him to drop the subject, he will.

“Hey, uh, thanks for your help earlier,” he starts.

“Hm. Don’t mention it.”

“You didn’t have to go so far out of your way to help me, though.”

Ada shakes her head. “The van was already there. Keys already in the ignition, explosives already rigged in the back. Not very far out of my way, so don’t worry about it.”

Leon blinks blankly. “No, not… not that. I mean this.” He stops and points down at the shirts.

Ada turns to look at him and follows his pointer finger to the pile of fabric, then comes to a stop as well. “I…”

“I feel bad that you felt the need to do all that for me. I mean, it was enough that you cared to double back at all, and then carried me all the way here in heels, and then treated my wounds, but then you found and left all that supplies and food that could have been of use to you instead, and you made sure I was comfortable, and I just… I appreciate it. I really do.” Leon takes a deep breath and stares at the floor, feeling the embarrassment welling up again as he continues rambling. “And, uh, I hope you don’t feel too awkward about the… clothes situation? I just want you to know that I’m not weirded out or anything. I understand you were just doing what you needed to do, and I-“

“What are you even going on about right now?”

Leon raises his gaze back to Ada and finds her staring at him with a completely blank expression. “I… I’m thanking you for coming back for me.”

Ada hesitates, then shakes her head. “I… have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“…What?”

“Are you saying some unknown third party saved you?”

“…Are _you_ saying some unknown third party saved me?”

Leon and Ada stare at each other in silence for several heavy seconds before Ada speaks again, her eyes narrowed in contemplation. “You’re telling me the Tyrant somehow didn’t find you, and then you woke up here all patched up, and that’s how you’re alive right now, and you have no idea how any of that happened. That’s what you’re telling me.”

Leon suddenly realizes why Ada had actually been so surprised to see him show up again. It wasn’t because of his fight in the power room. It was because she thought the Tyrant killed him at the entrance to the sewage facility. She thought she’d left him for dead, and if she thought that, then there would have been no reason for her to double back for him. “I… Are you sure it wasn’t you?” he stammers stupidly anyway.

Ada doesn’t reply immediately. She instead takes a moment to stare intensely at him, almost like she’s scrutinizing his honesty, and Leon realizes how suspicious this sounds. She must decide he’s being truthful, though, because she continues as before. “Leon, I was thrown into the garbage while I was chasing Annette. There’s no way I could have gone back.”

“But if it wasn’t you, then who else could it have been?”

“How should I know?”

“You haven’t seen anyone else down here?”

“Only Annette, and I doubt she’s the type to be a good Samaritan.”

Leon stammers dumbfoundedly. “I… But…”

Ada sighs and turns around to continue toward the door out into the treatment pool room. “Look, if we ever end up having to worry about it, it’ll be later. But hopefully we _won’t_ have to worry about it. The only other people that would still be alive down here to help you are people with Umbrella, and I don’t know why any Umbrella employee would take pity on a dying police officer, but I doubt they’ll be so friendly when they find out you’re helping the FBI confiscate their bioweapons. Let’s just be thankful you’re still alive.” She reaches the door and pushes it open, then turns back to Leon, who is still standing by the shirts looking lost. “Are you coming?”

Leon tears his gaze away from the shirts. “Yeah, I… Yeah.” He forces himself to follow Ada out the door, and the two continue to make their way across the walkway to the cable car dock. All the while, his head reels as he tries to make sense of this new information. This doesn’t make any sense. He must be missing something. Unless… Ada is just gaslighting him? But why would she do that? If she was trying to manipulate him for some reason, wouldn’t it be more strategic to just let him keep believing she saved his life again? Unless she was anticipating that he already knew it wasn’t her who did it, that he was testing her for some reason, and she didn’t want to risk that lie? Or maybe she doesn’t believe him after all and now she thinks _he’s_ with the enemy, because how else could he have not been killed by the Tyrant and been rescued by some Umbrella-associated stranger? But she _acts_ like she still trusts him. God, this is so confusing. He’s just thinking himself in circles at this point.

He wants to believe that Ada isn’t lying. She looked and sounded genuinely confused, even in the garbage room before he brought up this situation at all.

But if Ada didn’t help him, then… who the hell did!?

_Beep._

Leon jumps back to attention at the sound of the cable car door sliding open as Ada holds out her ID wristband to the sensor. She steps inside the vehicle, and Leon follows behind, trying to push the spiraling confusion from his mind. Ada is probably right. There are other things to be worrying about right now, like finding the G-virus sample and getting out of this deathtrap of a city. If this mystery becomes important again later, then so be it. They’ll just deal with it then.

Ada immediately sits down on the bench to rest her leg, leaving Leon to activate the cable car. “This may be a one-way ride,” she says as he walks over to the controls. “So be prepared, Leon.”

Leon nods, then pulls the switch to start the vehicle. The door slides shut, and various mechanisms roar to life.

“This tram is bound for NEST,” a mechanical voice rings out from an overhead speaker. “Do not exit until the final destination.” With a slight jolt, the cable car lurches forward and begins its slow journey down the tunnel, deeper and deeper into the earth.

Leon stares out the window at the tunnel ahead with a frown. His questions are still eating away at him even though he is trying to push them away for now. So many confusing things have happened over the last day, and the zombie apocalypse is only the beginning of that long list. Why can he shoot just fine with the unfamiliar shotgun while the familiarity of Matilda feels so wrong in his grip? Why did the Tyrant hesitate in the parking garage? How did the Tyrant miss the opportunity to kill him outside the sewers? How did he get to the monitor room? Does Ada still trust him? Can he still trust Ada? Maybe his mind is just starting to lose track of it all. Maybe that’s why nothing makes sense anymore, why nothing adds up. Maybe that’s why it feels like he’s missing something incredibly important. Maybe he’s actually going insane.

“You okay over there?”

Leon jumps as Ada’s voice rings out from the bench behind him. He hates that he’s so flighty right now, but his nerves are shot. “Yeah, just… I’m just thinking.”

“About what?”

Leon frowns harder and tenses slightly. He can’t tell Ada what he’s really thinking about. He can’t tell her that he’s thinking about how she might not trust him anymore, or about how he might not be able to trust her, or about how he feels like he’s losing his mind. He can’t keep pondering his questions aloud now that she’s told him it isn’t important. He stammers for something else to say and eventually settles on talking about Umbrella, focusing on the growing hatred he has for the corporation and its atrocities. This is all their fault anyway. They’re the reason all these people are dead, all his fellow police officers, all the innocent civilians he was supposed to protect. They’re the reason he and Ada both have a foot in the grave. They’re the reason the Tyrant exists, the reason he developed his odd fixation that he can still feel creeping through the recesses of his mind. They’re the reason he’s so confused about everything right now.

“I was just thinking, I can’t wait for the FBI to raid Umbrella headquarters and take those bastards to justice,” Leon declares as he turns around to face Ada again, and his sincere disdain is enough to temporarily push his other contemplations from his mind.

Ada nods. “I agree. But to be clear, you’re not working in official capacity. This is a federal case. Once we get the G-virus, I’m back on my own.”

Leon turns away to stare back out into the tunnel. He’s so deep in this case, and he already knows so much information that is probably classified. Wouldn’t the FBI want to question him? Use him as an asset? He’s a first-hand witness. What’s with the sudden need to shake him away? Maybe she really doesn’t trust him anymore?

“Hey, Leon. Trust me.”

Leon turns around and marches back up to the bench. Why is she telling him to trust her? It’s Ada who might not be trusting him enough, not the other way around. “You trust me?”

Ada laughs under her breath. “Honestly, if I didn’t, you’d probably be dead.”

Leon frowns again. “Right…” And he isn’t just saying that. He’s just a rookie cop who hasn’t had a single day on the job. She’s a literal FBI agent. She could take him out in a heartbeat if she felt the need to do so. Maybe she does still trust him after all?

God, he’s so sick of this back-and-forth thinking. One second he’s thinking one thing, then the next second he’s thinking something completely different, then the next second he’s back to the first thing again, then the next second he’s thinking something else entirely. This is a mess. This is such a big mess. He just wants conclusive answers, dammit! Why can’t he think clearly anymore? He starts to pace the compartment, looking around the cable car with evident unrest. He feels like an outsider in his own scattered head.

“Look, I thought I might need your help,” Ada continues. “And I was right. If you can secure the G-virus, I can make sure what happened in Raccoon City never happens again.”

“Ada…” What is she saying? Didn’t she just imply he shouldn’t get any more involved because he’s just some rookie police officer? He’s suddenly extremely aware of the anxiety and paranoia taking over his emotions. This conversation is probably so straightforward, but it’s still too much for him to process right now. He feels like he’s drowning in his thoughts and her words. Leon swiftly steps over and sits down on the bench beside Ada, trying to steady his voice so that the potential onset of an anxiety attack isn’t too obvious. “You said it yourself, it’s a federal case. I don’t-“

“Leon, look at me.” Ada gestures to her injured leg, then scoffs and looks away. “I’m a liability now. If I’m gonna finish this case, you’re the last hope I’ve got.”

Leon stares down at his hands. She was so reluctant to show weakness before. Why is she so willing to do so now? She’s so unpredictable, so inconsistent. One second she’s cold and distant, the next second she’s warm and concerned. Or maybe she’s completely normal and _he’s just losing his mind._

How is he supposed to trust anyone if he can’t even trust himself?

Even putting that aside, if he goes to get the G-virus sample himself, that means he’s going to have to leave Ada here in the cable car alone, and he doesn’t like that idea, especially considering that they’re going to be in the heart of Umbrella’s operation. “I’m not just gonna leave you here. What if you’re attacked? What if you need help-”

Leon feels Ada’s hand cup his cheek and turn his head to face her, and before he knows what is happening, her lips are pressed against his in a warm kiss.

He freezes. He was right. She cares about him beyond the platonic. She’s kissing him. Obviously she trusts him, he’s sure of it now, but maybe that trust exists just because she is biased by attraction. Does that matter though? Is he really going to argue about the details of the trust that he has worked so hard to earn from her? He cares about her greatly, and he wants to help her succeed in this mission, and he wants her to get out of here alive, and he wants to just trust her, but now he feels even more overwhelmed. This is the single worst possible time for her to be making a move like this, when he’s mentally breaking down into irrational incoherency.

He tries to focus on the kiss, the sensation of her lips against his, but before he can bring himself to feel anything at all, she’s drawing away from him. That seemed incredibly short. In fact, she’s looking at him now with an expression that he can only describe as slightly off-put, like she cut it short on purpose.

“Are you okay?”

Leon struggles to speak, his mouth suddenly feeling extremely dry. “W-why?”

Ada frowns. “You weren’t… You didn’t kiss back.”

Shit. Leon was so frozen up in confusion and contemplation that he completely forgot that kissing is a two-person activity. He should have kissed back. Right? That’s what any sane man would do in this situation, a hot lady that he cares about kissing him like that. _Why’d he freeze!?_ God, he hates this. Now he has to say something to explain why he just tensed up like that, why he didn’t reciprocate.

“I…” He sits there stupidly for a moment. “I don’t… I’m not…”

He knows there are words that want to come out, but he doesn’t know what they are. He doesn’t want Ada to think it’s her fault that he wasn’t responding, like she did something wrong. It’s his own damn fault, just like it always is regarding him and women. He eventually settles on something simple to say, and although it is a bit of a cliché, it is the only coherent thing he can think of.

“It’s not you. It’s me.”

“Oh.” Ada stares at his face for a few seconds with that look of scrutiny again, but he isn’t sure what she’s judging this time. He swears he can see the corner of her lip twitch slightly, and then her eyes darken a little, as though she’s just made an awful oversight. “I’m sorry, I just assumed…” She glances away with an odd look. “I understand. To each their own. No judgement.”

Leon immediately tenses with panic when he realizes how, exactly, she interpreted that statement. “Wait, I didn’t mean-“

“Now arriving at NEST.” Ada looks past Leon out the front window at the returning sound of the mechanical voice. Leon whips his head around to follow her gaze and sees that the tram has come to a stop at the end of the tunnel. He turns back to Ada and opens his mouth to continue his desperate correction of his previous statement, but she interrupts him before he can get a word out.

“Go. Please, we don’t have much time.” She hands him the ID wristband that she removed from her wrist while he was zoning out in his panic. “You’re gonna need this.” When he doesn’t reach out to take it, simply sitting there in a panicked stupor, she shoves it into his hand.

Leon shakes himself from his daze at the contact, then takes the wristband and stares down at it. What is he supposed to say right now? She’s already moved on to a different topic. He can’t correct her _now_. For one thing, he’ll seem like he’s not taking this responsibility seriously. For another thing, he’ll look like even more of a bumbling idiot.

But he can’t just say _nothing_! Now she thinks he’s-

“Leon. Tell me you’ll do this.”

Leon forces himself to look back up into her eyes. He tries to convince himself it doesn’t matter right now. The mission is bigger than his dumb image. This stupid misunderstanding is just petty nonsense that doesn’t matter. Besides, can’t he correct her later? When it’s more appropriate? In a subtle way? Maybe mention his girlfriend? Well, his _ex_ -girlfriend. Will Ada still think it was a Freudian slip though?

Does _he_ think it was a Freudian slip?

No! He knows himself better than that. He knows that he…

He knows that he really doesn’t want to think about this right now, and his thoughts shut down completely at that point.

Leon stands up abruptly. “Okay,” he states plainly. With that, he turns toward the cable car door to step out onto the NEST dock before he changes his mind about letting this go for now.

“Leon.”

Leon pauses and turns to look back at Ada, silently begging her not to say anything that will continue to spur on what is starting to feel like an identity crisis.

“I’m counting on you. _Everyone_ is counting on you.”

Leon takes a deep, steadying breath. “I know.” And with that, he steps out into the NEST entrance, fully convinced that he has completely lost the last traces of his sanity to the pressures of this goddamn apocalypse.


	8. Condensation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did somebody say...
> 
> ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* _A C C I D E N T A L_ *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧
> 
> ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* _V O Y E U R I S M_ *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧???

With one last scan of one last room, T-00 is convinced that this facility has been scoured in its entirety for resources. It has taken him multiple trips to bring everything back to the monitor room thanks to his lack of pockets. His first trip was the shortest; he gathered a few herbs in the treatment pool room. On his next trip he managed to bust back through to the upper waterway by breaking a metal door that definitely wasn’t meant to be broken in such a way. As much as he hated wading through the sewage yet again, he found a lot of discarded ammunition in the heaps of garbage. Wading through the sewage was also the only way back to the balconies, and there was plenty of useful supplies past all the locked doors to the workrooms, doors that he also broke through quite unceremoniously. They contained so much supplies, in fact, that it took him two additional trips just to bring it all back.

The only place he didn’t search was the bottom waterway and the storage room beyond. Jumping down there would have been easy, but getting back out would have been a difficult task considering that the main method of doing so was yet another normal-human-sized metal ladder that wouldn’t support his weight in the slightest. Aside from that, though, he could hear and see more G-virus infected zombies wallowing through the filth, and he wasn’t too keen on fighting them and soiling his limiters with their disgusting bodily secretions again anytime soon.

He was confident he gathered everything after his fourth trip, and he was quite satisfied with the piles he organized around the male’s resting form: items to fight with, items to heal with, and items to consume for sustenance. He even found another one of those strange storage compartments the male had strapped to his legs and hips prior to stripping him. But there was still a subtle worry in the back of T-00’s newly-thinking mind, a concern that he might have missed something useful. He needed to show the male that he was not only competent as a mate, but _exceedingly_ so. Thus, T-00 set out on a fifth trip just to make sure he didn’t miss anything.

Sure enough, he immediately found something he missed before: more food. It was stashed away in one of the desk drawers in the break room, more of those crinkly colorful packages containing the sickeningly sweet rectangles. He took his time looking through all the drawers he could find after that, searching every corner of every room with meticulous thoroughness, scanning the piles of garbage more closely, even looking over the bodies of all the zombies he crushed the skulls of, determined to gather every last useful thing he could get his hands on to win over the target of his primal desire. He didn’t find much more than two additional boxes of bullets, but at least he could rest easy knowing he found everything there was to be found.

There was a single oddity that he experienced during his search, however. During his initial search of the drawers in the break room desk, the one where he found the extra food, he was interrupted from his focused scavenging by a loud mechanical clanging just outside. He immediately strode back out onto the balconies to find the walkway to the lower waterway raising up. T-00 stomped around the rooms for a bit in search of whatever may have caused such a thing to happen, but nothing seemed to be different, and there were no signs of anyone else being present. Certainly he would have been able to smell them. All he could smell here was sewage. He supposed it could have just been a malfunction, and it didn’t seem to be anything of concern, so he eventually returned to his careful searching of the break room and, eventually, all the other rooms beyond.

Now that he’s certain there’s nothing left of use in this facility, T-00 finds himself wading through the upper waterway, making his way back to the monitor room with an armful of food rectangles and ammunition. He feels a growing eagerness knowing that he doesn’t have to venture out anymore, that he can simply stay close and guard the male at this point. He can simply _watch_.

There’s something about the look of the human that is strangely appealing. His face, his hair, it’s all so smooth, so soft, nothing like his own wrinkled face and hairless body. The male looks so calm as he sleeps, while T-00 doesn’t recall ever sleeping at all. The male speaks so passionately, emotes so clearly, two things that T-00 cannot do. The male’s endurance hides the underlying frailty of his humanity, and the idea that T-00 has the power to break that frail form so easily but chooses not to is exhilarating. Everything about the male is so foreign yet so alluringly intriguing all the same.

T-00 is perhaps even more eager for when the male wakes up. The small human will probably be confused at first, perhaps frightened, waking up in a strange place. But T-00 will calm him, show him the supplies he brought for him, reassure him that he has no ill intent, comfort him with soft noises and touches. Surely the male will understand then. Surely the male will find his protection and his provisions impressive and desirable, and then the male will want to stay with T-00, and then T-00 can keep his new mate safe and warm and happy.

The problem, though, is that in retrospect, T-00 probably shouldn’t have spent such an excessively long time scavenging around for almost nothing.

As T-00 steps up the flight of stairs leading to the treatment pool room, a mechanical sound rumbles from up ahead, and it only takes him a second to realize that it is the sound of the cable car activating. A sudden rush of panic overwhelms T-00 as he hurriedly stomps out into the treatment pool room and toward the cable car dock, and sure enough, the tram is disappearing down the track. With growing urgency, he turns and stomps across the walkway to the monitor room.

The door slams open with such force that it nearly flies off its hinges, and T-00 ducks through the doorframe only to experience the novel sensation of his heart dropping into his stomach.

The male is gone.

The supplies in T-00’s grasp simply fall to the ground as T-00 lets his arms drop to his sides. He stares down at the empty nest of shirts with an agonizing tightness in his chest. The male’s clothes are gone. All the supplies T-00 left for him are gone. The only things that remain are a few of the crinkly food packages and one of the water bottles, all opened and emptied. T-00 crouches down and picks up one of the shiny plastic scraps, turning it despondently in his hand. A strange sound vibrates in his throat that he isn’t consciously aware he is making.

A deep-set longing wells up inside T-00 until his entire body aches. He’s been longing to look at the male again, to smell his scent, to hold his trembling form, to listen to his tiny sounds, to quell his fear and replace it all with security and comfort and pleasure. And just as soon as T-00 was about to claim that after all his dedication, it was gone. This is the only thing he has ever consciously wanted. Why does it allude him in such an infuriating manner? Why does that make him hurt so much? How is something as intangible as an unfulfilled desire able to produce such physical pain?

That longing is immediately supplanted by an intense dread when T-00 thinks back to the departing cable car. The male must have gained access to it somehow, maybe thinking it was a way out, and now he is on his way to NEST. Surely the male is still weakened by injury, even if he isn’t cold and bleeding and hungry anymore. NEST will be an incredibly dangerous place for the male without T-00 to protect him. He could get hurt again out there. He could get _killed_.

Why? Why would the male leave? T-00 doesn’t understand. The male woke up to warmth and comfort and safety and provisions, so surely he must have known that someone was caring for him and protecting him. Why would he ever want to leave that? Was all of it simply not enough to convince him to wait for his protector and provider to return to him? Was it simply not enough to impress him at all? Did T-00 do something wrong? Did T-00 fail to do something vital? The ripped food packaging crinkles loudly as T-00 clenches his fist around it, feeling a rising frustration at how difficult this human courtship is, how little he knows about it.

Unless… The male _didn’t_ leave of his own accord? Only an Umbrella associate would possess an ID wristband to activate the cable car. Does that mean Umbrella found his male? Did they take him?

_Did they hurt him!?_

T-00 drops the packaging and stands back up with infuriated intensity. He refuses to lose the male again, to let the male get hurt again. He reaches down and grabs one of the snack bars and one of the boxes of bullets he just brought back and stuffs them between his undershirt and the collar of his trench coat like it’s a makeshift pocket, more offerings to appease the male after T-00 finds whoever may have taken him away and _destroys them_.

He doesn’t have any time to waste. The cable car already got a head start, and it’s faster than his stride. He storms out of the monitor room, across the walkway, and to the cable car dock. He jumps off the edge of the dock to the track below and lands with a loud thud, then turns to begin his journey down the steep tunnel. He can just barely see the tram in the distance, getting further and further by the second. The loud thudding of his footsteps reverberates around the tunnel as he stomps through, his pace much quicker than his normally collected gait. He loses sight of the tram in the distant darkness of the tunnel eventually, but it doesn’t matter. He knows the entire layout of NEST. He’ll find the male again, wherever he may be.

And he _won’t_ lose him a third time.

As T-00 continues, draped in nothing but pitch-black darkness and the sound of his own echoing footfall, he begins to get lost in his thoughts, something that once caused immense frustration but now fuels his intense determination. He ponders how strange this all is. He had once been so content to simply do as Umbrella commanded of him, to follow their orders and to never think or feel or want. Now he questions whether ‘content’ was really the right word to describe it. It wasn’t really contentment as much as it was complacency. And he had been defined by that complacency as recently as several hours ago.

T-00 is a Tyrant, carefully designed and programmed and trained, reliant on nothing but brute force and quick calculation and rigid self-restraint. The rapidity at which the male shook him from that simple existence is astounding, in a way. That encounter at the RPD, the oddity of it all, the confusion it invoked, the pleasure it culminated in, was all a catalyst to a chain reaction of deviance and desire that is continuing to escalate into something T-00 can’t control with brute force and quick calculation and rigid self-restraint anymore. But that’s okay, because he doesn’t need to control it that way. He wants to control it with gentle care and long contemplation and untethered self-release.

But all of that will only come once he secures the male and clearly establishes himself as protector and provider and pleasurer. He knows what he wants to give, and he knows what he wants to receive in return, and he will do whatever he needs to do to accomplish that.

After a trek that takes much too long for his liking, T-00 finally makes out a faint light in the distance. As he approaches the end of the tunnel, the stilled cable car comes back into few, growing closer and closer until he finally reaches the dock. Using his unparalleled strength, he pulls himself up onto the concrete ledge and over the metal railing.

He turns to face the cable car with a resounding growl. On one hand, he hopes that he can find some evidence of what happened to his human inside. On the other hand, that evidence may be less than ideal in relation to his goals if it is particularly gruesome in nature. He marches toward the tram and slams a fist into the side, denting the door and sending a few sparks flying from the wiring and circuitry. He pries his fingers into the slight gap he just created and forcefully rips the door off, then leans inside to examine the interior.

The cable car is empty. But there is also no sign of any struggle. It is a neutral discovery until he flares his nostrils and detects confirmation of the male’s journey here. Faintly, just faintly, he can smell the long-faded scent of the male... alongside the scent of a human female.

T-00 clenches his fists at his sides. The human female from the parking garage is the only other human he’s seen with the male. She must have found him again in the sewage facility. Perhaps she is the one who brought him here. In some sense T-00 should be relieved to discover this. The two seemed to be on good terms in the garage, the female even spouting nonsense about how she saved the male’s life, so it is unlikely that she hurt the male or brought him here with any directly malicious intent. But at the same time, that thought fills T-00 with a completely unfamiliar emotion that he doesn’t immediately know the name of. It is a lot like the possessive feeling he had when that disgusting G-zombie tried to parasitize his male and tried to pull the male from his arms. But it’s much stronger now. Much more directed. Much more anxiety-inducing. What is it?

... _Jealousy?_

If so, he’s certainly the first Tyrant to ever feel such a reckless emotion. And recklessness is problematic.

If he encounters the female, he can’t promise he won’t go out of his way to eliminate that problem.

With a furious huff, T-00 pulls himself back out of the compartment and stomps over to NEST, the multi-part entrance left wide open aside from the last door, which has malfunctioned and is stuttering up and down with sporadic sprays of electricity. T-00 ducks underneath and into the well-lit reception lobby, and immediately he begins scanning for any signs of his human male’s recent presence.

He checks the room behind the receptionist desk. Nothing. He ducks his head through the door to the security room, but he can clearly see that it is empty, so he doesn’t give it any extra thought. He pushes his way into the hallway leading to the cafeteria. A peek through the window reveals several dead bodies sprawled across the cafeteria floor, but none of them belong to the male. He proceeds down the hall to the door leading to the kitchen, but it is locked without an ID wristband.

Good thing he’s a Tyrant.

He slams his fist into the door, shattering the security screen. Another punch dents the edge just enough for him to reach a hand through and force the door to slide back inside the wall with a horrific sound of grinding metal and grating mechanisms. Another dead zombie lays on the floor of the hall, its head blown apart by a point-blank shotgun bullet. T-00 proceeds to the next door and pries it open similarly to the last, revealing the nap room. There’s nothing of interest in here either. It looks like T-00 is going to have to venture deeper.

T-00 returns to the reception lobby and stomps over to the doors leading into the main walkway shaft. He repeats his previous strategy, punching the edge where the two doors meet until he can slip his hands through and forcefully slide them along their tracks, sending more sparks of electricity showering across his limiters. He steps into the large chamber and stomps across the bridge leading to the central elevator. It appears that only the bridge to the east wing is extended, so that must be where his target has gone.

T-00 pauses at the realization that this male is still his target, one way or another. How interesting it is that a prior target of his homicidal mission is now the same target of a much more intimate one.

Pulling himself from his thoughts, T-00 proceeds across the only extended bridge to the east wing. He tears open another set of sliding doors and stomps through a small corridor. Thankfully the door to the lobby is simply motion-activated rather than wristband-activated. He’s punched enough solid metal doors at this point that his knuckles are _almost_ starting to hurt. T-00’s gaze scans over the quiet room. Again, there is nothing of interest.

He pushes his way through the next door, emerging in a presentation room with a large window overlooking a greenhouse. It takes a few seconds for T-00 to process everything that is going on inside. The greenhouse looks like it was hideously overgrown with plant matter at some point in the recent past, but presently the leaves and vines are brown and wilted like decaying flesh. There are massive cracks radiating from a central point of impact in the glass pane, and beyond that breakage T-00 can see the frantic movement of several individuals. There are two humanoid figures that look to consist of more plant matter, but the third figure is what truly draws T-00’s attention.

It’s the human male. And he’s being attacked from both directions by the plant zombies.

T-00 is simultaneously filled with relief and rage. He feels a heavy weight lift from his chest upon finally locating the male again and seeing him perfectly alive and well. But with the plant monster that has just latched onto the male like it has, opening its serrated face to devour him, that might not be true for much longer. With an immediate surge of furious protectiveness, T-00 shatters the glass window with a heavy punch and leaps down onto the greenhouse walkway.

Everyone involved in the tussle is clearly thrown off-guard by the sudden intrusion. The plant zombie that isn’t currently attacking the male staggers backward awkwardly with a series of deep clicks that almost sound surprised. The plant zombie that _is_ attacking the male hesitates, its jaw twitching as it contemplates whether it should lash out at the Tyrant or eat the male’s head off first. The male, meanwhile, has lost all the color in his face and is emitting a sound something like an overwhelmed whimper.

The plant zombie eventually decides that yes, it is going to eat the male’s head off before doing anything else. Unfortunately for it, T-00’s hand is quick to reach out and yank its head back hard enough to rip it from the rest of its body. The vines across the zombie’s torso and arms start to flail wildly as it staggers sideways into the walkway railing, dragging the male along with it. The male winces and grunts with pain when several of those vines lash against the skin of his arms and face, leaving tiny cuts in his flesh. T-00 is quick to reach out and yank the rest of the zombie’s body from the male in order to methodically rip the vines apart as though he is ripping out an animal’s intestines, and the male stumbles backward in panic.

As T-00 throws the remains of the first zombie over the railing to coil around themselves in the soil of the greenhouse basin, his ears are struck by the horrific sound of the male screaming in pain. He turns to find that the second zombie has latched onto the male and is sinking the tooth-like growths of its face deep into the male’s side, clicking angrily.

The sound of the male’s agony makes T-00’s vision go red. He stomps over to the male, who lets out a terrified sob, and lifts his foot to bring it down against the plant zombie’s torso, smashing it into mush. Its ‘jaw’ goes lax, and the male successfully wriggles out of its grip. The vines of the zombie continue to writhe, attempting to wrap themselves around T-00’s leg. The Tyrant simply grunts with annoyance and kicks the remaining material over the edge of the walkway to join its partner.

With the zombies disposed of, T-00 finally turns his full attention back to the male. The injured human is dragging himself along the floor of the walkway, spouting little noises of agony every time he puts any strain on his heavily bleeding side. Once again, the male has suffered intense injury in T-00’s absence. An intense ache spreads through T-00’s chest at the sight and the sound, alongside some subtle feeling of failure. This happened because he wasn't here to protect the male. If only he had gotten here a little earlier, if only he hadn’t taken so long searching the sewage facility, if only he’d successfully courted the male sooner…

No, there’s simply no time for such thoughts. It is much more important to focus on the present reality than some hypothetical past. The male is injured, and T-00 is going to do something about it. This is his second chance to show the male his competence to protect and provide, to be a good and desirable mate, and he isn’t going to waste it.

T-00 begins to steps toward the male, and the human’s response is immediate and intense. He starts to make more noises of panic and fumbles to grab hold of his handgun, but his hands are so shaky and drenched in his own blood that he can’t seem to get a grip on the thing. T-00 understands; the male is confused and afraid and in pain. In any other circumstances, T-00 would opt to handle this with care. But T-00 can’t risk handling these circumstances with too much patience, because the male will just hurt himself more if he continues to struggle and thrash around like he’s doing now. T-00 continues to steps forward, closing the rest of the short distance.

“ _Nonononononopleaseno_ -“ The male stammers out fearful protests as he continues trying to push himself pathetically across the floor, further aggravating the open wound on his side and smearing blood across the metal.

Humans truly do become such irrational things when they’re afraid. T-00 really needs to restrain the male before he does any more damage to himself. He crouches down, reaches out, and grabs the male’s shoulders in both his hands to hold him steady. The male chokes out a loud sob as his entire body tenses beneath T-00’s grasp.

“ _IdontwannadieIdontwannadiepleasenoohgod-_ ”

T-00 pulls the male into a firm hold against his chest, and the male immediately starts writhing in the attempt to escape, sobbing and trembling and shouting out more pleas about not wanting to die. T-00 simply holds him tighter, bracing the back of his head with one hand and the small of his back with the other, and lets out a soothing purr.

The male’s cries cut off with a squeak, and he falls silent aside from his uncontrollable sobbing and hiccupping that has escalated into borderline hyperventilation. His entire body has gone stiff, like he’s completely frozen. T-00 would much prefer for the male to relax, but at least he isn’t shouting and squirming in panic anymore. T-00 tries to think of something else to do to calm the male, and he thinks back to the moment of peace back in the monitor room. He starts to run his gloved fingers through the male’s dark blonde hair, gently petting his head, continuing to purr comfortingly all the while.

The male makes a strange noise as his body relaxes only slightly, as though he’s trying to fight off the onset of the calm. T-00 doesn’t understand why the human would fight such a thing, though. Perhaps he’s still too frightened to comprehend the security of the embrace. T-00 recalls the positive reactions he got from the male the last time they interacted so closely, and he decides to move his face to the male’s neck with another purr to further encourage relaxation. Sure enough, the male lets out a quiet whine and goes completely limp in T-00’s arms, although his breathing is still rapid and sporadic. T-00 continues to purr into his neck, continues to stroke his hair, continues to pull him close, providing all the positive reinforcement he is currently capable of providing in return for the male’s passivity. The male’s breathing finally starts to calm as well, although it is still interrupted by an occasional hiccup.

T-00 feels the male exhale a slow, shaky breath. “… _W-what_ … _?_ ”

He pulls his head back just enough to look at the male’s face. His bright blue eyes are wide, trembling, teary. They’re in pain. They’re confused. They’re immensely conflicted.

But they aren’t fearful anymore, and that’s all that matters, because now T-00 can finally see past that condensation from before and stare into that incredibly human soul.

The male swallows. “…W-why are you…”

T-00 can feel his own piercing gaze softening ever so slightly as he looks into the male’s eyes. He is suddenly overwhelmed by that same calm from before, the feeling of his muscular body melting around the smaller male’s fragile form, the feeling of a strange belonging. He leans his head forward, touching his forehead to the male’s, and breathes in deeply, calmly. He relaxes further as he is engulfed by the familiar scent of the male, mostly his pure essence, but also a fading hint of his bitter fear and, encouragingly, the faintest hint of his sweet arousal.

But T-00 feels himself tense slightly when he is hit by something else shortly afterward: an incredibly faint and underlying scent of that _human female_.

_Why was she touching his male!? Leaving her foul scent on him!?_

T-00 grumbles, that jealousy returning alongside a rising fury. The scent is incredibly faint. It doesn’t smell like any specific hormones, just her as a whole. But it’s there. On _his_ male. Tainting his male’s wonderful scent with unwanted bitter aftertastes. His instincts immediately scream at him that _the female is a threat, she’s begun courting the male as well, she can’t have him, the male is his mate and she can’t have him, find her, eliminate her-_

He quickly realizes that the sudden shift in his demeanor has frightened the male back into a state of panic, his eyes fogging up with that fearful condensation again. T-00 forces himself to relax, to soften his gaze again, to cease the low growling under his breath and replace it with the purring from before, even if that isn't a true reflection of his thoughts in that moment. The male slowly relaxes again, but he seems a bit more wary of T-00’s sudden docility.

T-00 reminds himself that the female isn’t here right now. Well, it is likely that she is in the facility based on the presence of her scent in the cable car. But she isn’t _here_ here. Which means T-00 has to take this opportunity right here, right now, to successfully court the male before she can get her smelly hands on him again.

He can’t afford to wait any longer, to make any more mistakes, because now there is _competition_. He needs to show the male that he can protect and provide and pleasure better than she ever could, and he needs to do it _now_.

T-00 stands decisively from his crouching position, the male still held tightly against his chest, and the male instinctively throws his arms around T-00’s neck in fear of falling from his hold. T-00 can feel the male’s body growing tense again from the shift in positions, so he simply stands there for a moment and continues his soothing ministrations until the male goes limp again. Once that happens, T-00 begins to stride through the greenhouse in the direction of the drug testing lab. Of all the currently accessible places for there to be any first aid supplies, it would most likely be there.

“W-where are we g-going?”

If T-00 could verbally answer, he’d tell the male that they’re going somewhere warm and quiet and safe to fix his wounds up _again_ , because he’s apparently very accident-prone and really needs a good mate to look after him because of it.

And then they’re going to settle this courtship issue the only way such an issue can be settled.

But he can’t talk. So he simply purrs again and nuzzles his face against the male’s soft hair, and the male simply whimpers quietly in reply.

* * *

Ada holds her breath when she hears the door to the security room open.

She’s thankful for her natural attentiveness to her surroundings. Had she been lost in her thoughts or dozing off like most other people in her situation probably would have been, she wouldn’t have picked up on the familiar sound of heavy footsteps echoing down the previously silent cable car tunnel.

Ada knew there’d be nowhere for her to run if the Tyrant found her. Even if she shot it enough to stun it or take it down momentarily, it would just continue to hunt her once it recovered, and there was no way she’d outrun it with her leg in this condition. She knew she’d have to rely on stealth instead.

She quickly contemplated whether to stay in the tram or head into NEST to hide. It was possible that the Tyrant wouldn’t even bother to check the cable car and would just head straight into NEST, making the tram the safest place to stay in that hypothetical. But if the Tyrant _were_ to check the tram, she would have nowhere to escape to. That possibility was all it took for her to decide to exit the cable car and find a place to hunker down in NEST until the stomping passed.

Ada headed through the open entrance into the reception area, then turned down the first hallway that caught her attention. Access to the cafeteria appeared to require the ID wristband she gave to Leon. She could have used her EMF Visualizer to simply hack her way in, but she could clearly see countless bodies scattered around the room through the window, and the last thing she needed was to get in a fight and draw the Tyrant right to her with the sound of gunfire. With that area compromised, Ada quickly turned around and headed back out into the main lobby.

She looked inside the next door to find it simply led to a single room with a bed, a desk, and several clunky security monitors. Hiding anywhere in there might as well have been a death wish, so she turned around to hack through the double doors leading deeper into the facility. Unfortunately, she was stopped by the unmistakable sound of the door being torn off the tram just outside.

Ada silently thanked herself for deciding to leave the tram. But she also cursed herself, because hacking and opening the next set of doors would surely alert the Tyrant to her presence. With nowhere else to go except more dead ends, she reluctantly slipped back into the security room, closed the door as quietly as she could, laid down on the floor, and shimmied her way beneath the bed. The wound in her leg burned with every movement, but she bit her tongue and sucked it up. A little pain was worth a chance at not dying. She could hear the stomping getting closer, entering the lobby, checking the small office behind the reception desk, then heading straight for the security room.

Now she finds herself trying not to breathe, trying to silence her heartbeat, as she dares to look out from her hiding spot under the bed at the door creaking open and the shaft of light falling across the room from the fluorescent bulbs outside.

All she can see from here are heavy leather boots and the buckled straps holding them tightly against the Tyrant’s massive calves. The bedframe is rather high off the ground, and as the Tyrant leans into the room, Ada prays that she’s pushed herself far enough back that she is shielded by the darkness beneath. After several agonizing seconds, the Tyrant lets out a frustrated huff, then pulls its body back out into the reception area and closes the security room door.

Ada slowly lets out all the air in her lungs. She hears the Tyrant’s footsteps moving away toward the cafeteria, and she doesn’t dare move from her place under the bed until the sound has disappeared completely and left her in at least a minute of silence. Slowly, warily, she pulls herself across the floor and back out into the open.

“Persistent bastard…”

Ada knows it would be unwise of her to venture deeper into the facility with her injury, especially with the Tyrant lumbering around, and she is content to stay right here where she knows there are no imminent threats. Even if Leon seemed a bit unsettled during their previous conversation, she’s aware of his general competence and his strong determination to do the right thing to the point of it being a fault. She knows he’ll be fine on his own, that he’ll secure the G-virus for her. It’s only a matter of patience.

Yes, patience. She must remember the importance of that virtue. She grew impatient in the cable car, and she stumbled for it. She assumed that Leon would be swayed by her charm. She was mistaken, of course, because she just wasn’t _patient_ enough to assess him adequately. His sexuality never even crossed her mind. He didn’t strike her as that kind of person upon first impression. But that doesn’t matter now. It was a simple slip-up, an undesirable oversight, but his naiveté and underlying hero complex gave her the leeway she needed to quickly recover.

 _Everyone is counting on you_ , she told him.

He's a good person. But she has a job to do.

And he’ll get that job done for one reason or another.

Still, Ada might as well try to get something accomplished while she’s taking refuge in here. With this being a security room, she can gain access to the security feeds throughout the facility. Hopefully she can use that to keep track of Leon, or Annette, or the Tyrant, or any other parties of interest, such as the mysterious person who helped Leon at the entrance to the sewage facility. She limps over to the desk and sits down in the swivel chair to finick with the computers. Several of the monitors are shut off, and the few that are powered on display nothing more than static. She presses some of the keys on the keyboard to boot the main terminal out of sleep mode, then starts to maneuver her way through security settings in an attempt to get some of the feeds back online. It’s entirely possible that the hardware itself has been compromised, the cameras destroyed by the various laboratory catastrophes that likely occurred over the last few days. But surely she can get something or other if she keeps messing with it.

As she works, she hears the loud footsteps of the Tyrant reemerging into the reception area. She halts her clacking at the keyboard as she listens to what she assumes is the monster brute-forcing its way through the double doors and into the next area. Once the stomping has passed, she continues. While she manages to tap into several camera feeds, there are some issues. For one thing, it seems that some of them aren’t functioning at all, just as she suspected. For another thing, some of the channels listed in the system aren't accessible from this security station, specifically those in the west wing and on the bottom level. It takes a good while before she gets one of the monitors up and running with a working feed.

> _CAM3 (RECEP)_

It displays the reception area, and sure enough, the doors just outside have been violently jammed open. More time passes before she manages to get the next camera up.

> _CAM13 (LOBBY E)_

It shows what looks like another pristine lobby. There is nothing of note, not even any dead bodies. More time, another feed.

> _CAM8 (CAFE)_

It’s the cafeteria. The bodies are all still limp on the ground, but she knows better than to trust that they’re actually dead. She pulls up another feed.

> _CAM18 (GH A)_

She pulls up a feed of a greenhouse, filling the fourth and final monitor. The main window is shattered, and all the overgrown plant life looks sickeningly wilted. Other than that, though, there is nothing of interest on screen.

Ada sits and waits for a few minutes, her eyes darting across the four monitors, but there is no movement on any of them the entire time. She starts to wonder where Leon could possibly be, or where the Tyrant wandered off to, or where Annette may be hiding. Surely she would have seen something by now.

Perhaps there are better cameras she can switch to. After a few more minutes she manages to switch the cafeteria feed to something else.

> _CAM14 (PRES)_

It’s simply a view of the room on the other side of the broken window overlooking the greenhouse. Not needing both shots, she works to change the greenhouse feed to something else.

> _CAM27 (GHB LOUNGE C)_

Another lobby of sorts, although this one is much less pristine, instead littered with dead bodies and even a few deceased lickers. Ada shakes her head and sighs. She’s starting to think that this is a waste of time. There’s no sign of anything, be it alive or undead, on any of these feeds. And if there are already at least twenty-seven channels, and it’s taken her this long just to access six of them, there’s no telling how long it will take her to find Leon or anything else of interest. He might be on one of the feeds that are broken or inaccessible, anyway.

She has nothing better to do while she’s waiting, though, so she might as well continue. The lobby on camera thirteen seems pretty useless at the moment, so she decides to change that one. After several more minutes, she manages to pull up something else.

> _CAM20 (DTL)_

She glances over the monitor, then does a double take when she realizes there is finally movement on this new feed. When she finally brings herself to comprehend that movement, however, she simply stares at the screen with widening eyes and a reddening face.

“Oh.”

Ada isn’t sure if this decision to continue switching through feeds was a decision that will benefit her or a decision that she viscerally regrets.

Probably both.


	9. Denial

Leon steps into the greenhouse and observes the results of his hard work with a sense of satisfaction. With the herbicide solution dispensed via the overhead irrigation system, all the overgrown plant material taking over the room is now wilted and dying. Leon didn’t think herbicides could work that quickly, but he also never thought a zombie apocalypse could happen, so he isn’t about to argue with the science.

He steps down the walkway ramp and scans the area up ahead. The plant material has died back sufficiently for him to reach the man in the hazmat suit that he couldn’t access before and retrieve the senior staff chip he needs to upgrade his ID wristband. Then he can finally access the west wing, get the G-virus sample, and get himself and Ada out of here.

He can’t wait to leave this place forever and never look back. Over the last hour he’s been able to avoid his chaotic thoughts simply because he’s been so focused on trying to puzzle his way through the complexities of NEST’s laboratories. But his confusions, his anxieties, his fears, they’re still lurking underneath that distraction, and the longer he stays here, the more likely it will be to bubble back to the surface. The last thing he needs right now is to spiral into another anxiety attack and lose his wits. Because if he loses his wits, he’ll inevitably end up doing or saying something stupid again.

As Leon walks toward his goal, he passes by one of the plant zombies he has run into plenty of times already. He settled on calling them ivies, because they’re just about as annoying and persistent as a poison ivy rash, and that humorous comparison helps to take a little bit of the edge off from his jarring encounters with them. The way they click and stagger feels uncanny, like they’re marionettes trying and failing to pass as human.

This one appears to be quite dead, though, which is surprising. Normally Leon can’t call them dead until he’s burnt them up to a crisp with his flamethrower. But even as he approaches it, it simply lays limply on the ground. The herbicide must have killed it instead.

Good riddance. That saves some fuel, too.

Leon steps over the unmoving body and continues around the bend until the corpse in the hazmat suit is laying on the ground right in front of him. With a sigh of victorious relief, Leon crouches down and retrieves the electronic chip that has fallen to the floor and switches it out with the one currently in his wristband.

“G-virus, here I come.”

_Clickclickclickclickclick-_

Leon quickly looks up to find that a second ivy was laying around nearby, and it turns out that it wasn’t nearly as dead as he’d hoped. Go figure the herbicide wouldn’t kill them. He quickly jumps to his feet and draws his handgun to shoot at the disgusting yellow growths across its body to incapacitate it like he’s done many times before, watching closely for any indication that it is about to lunge at him.

He yelps when he feels vines violently grabbing him from behind, and he is spun around to face the first ivy he passed, which has also decided to come to life and ambush him. Thinking fast, he grabs a combat knife and stabs it into the vertical slit that has opened on the thing’s face to consume him. It clicks angrily as it staggers, and he shoves it away and raises his gun to shoot at its growths as well. He spins around and quickly shoots the second one again before it can get too close, knocking it back.

Leon doesn’t like this close-quarters combat. He went out of his way to shoot down and burn up all the ivies he came across prior to this because he never knew when he’d have to go back through those areas and he didn’t want to have to deal with them later. But now that he has the chip to access the west wing, he’s 99.9% certain that he’ll never have to see this greenhouse ever again as long as he lives. It would honestly be safest and most ammo-efficient to juke around the first ivy while it’s down and simply leave. Pick your battles, as they say.

He raises his gun to shoot at the final growth on the first ivy and bring it down long enough to escape, but that train of thought is shattered completely at the sound that suddenly reverberates from the other side of the greenhouse viewing window. Leon feels like his lungs are full of lead as he snaps his head to the side to look out into the presentation room beyond.

It’s the goddamn Tyrant.

Just as Leon feared would happen if he had to stick around here long enough, his mind inevitably starts to stutter out of control like a short-circuiting computer. So many different thoughts and emotions storm through his brain that he can’t pinpoint any of them for more than a few milliseconds. Intense fear, intense dread, intense panic, more anxiety, more confusion, more frustration, more _awe_ , more of that _goddamn horniness_.

Why the hell does his brain stop functioning every time the Tyrant is around, the only times he desperately needs it to be functioning more than ever!?

Also as Leon feared, the sudden mental cataclysm and the subsequent loss of wits makes him do something incredibly stupid: he forgets that he’s currently sandwiched between two ivies that are hell-bent on ripping his head off. He shouts as the second ivy lunges at him and grabs him, then opens its horrific face in preparation to devour his own. Leon’s hands fumble across his uniform in search of a combat knife, a grenade, _something_ that he can shove in its mouth. Either he’s run out of sub-weapons or he’s completely lost his grip on physical reality, because he fails to come up with anything. He stares back into the maw of the ivy and desperately tries to push it away, but it’s much stronger than he is, and it doesn’t budge.

The shattering of glass rings through the greenhouse as the Tyrant punches straight through the window and jumps into the room with an incredible thud, causing the walkway to violently rattle. The ivy salivating over Leon’s face seems to hesitate for a moment, its jaw quivering. Leon stares past it at the Tyrant’s incredible form clothed in that familiar black leather. He suddenly feels like his heart is in his stomach and his intestines are in his lungs and his brain is in his ass, and he starts making a weird noise in his throat without even thinking about it.

The Tyrant suddenly reaches out and grabs the ivy by the vines encompassing its head. The giant snaps that head backward until it tears away completely, and the ivy’s body reacts like a chicken with its head cut off or the intact legs of a squished centipede. Its vines whip around in an uncontrolled manner, and Leon winces in pain as some of them gash his skin. He tries once more to push the ivy away, but the Tyrant's imposing presence has inflicted him with gelatin arms just like in his stupid wet dream. He feels so fucking useless.

That problem is quickly taken care of by the Tyrant, too. It reaches out again to tear the ivy from Leon’s body and begins to shred the plant matter as easily as one might tear the leaves off a head of lettuce. Finally free, Leon stumbles backward, desperate to get away while the Tyrant is distracted. In his panic, however, he fails to note that the first ivy is still clambering around on the walkway behind him, and he trips right into it.

The ivy latches onto him immediately as the two bodies go tumbling to the ground in a murderous tangle. Leon tries to squirm out of its grasp, but although he succeeds in keeping the thing’s head away from his face, he fails to shake it completely. Growing frustrated with its struggling prey, the ivy lets out a series of angry clicks and decides to simply chomp down deep into Leon’s side instead. Leon’s mouth falls open in an agonized scream as sharp pain shoots through his body, and he can already feel his warm blood gushing out around the creature’s teeth as he struggles.

A few tears start to stream down his face. _He_ isn’t going to turn into an ivy now, is he? He knows how zombies work, but not goddamn _plants_!

It doesn’t really matter, though, because if it doesn’t let go, it’s going to bite an entire chunk out of his side, and then his blood and guts are just going to spill out everywhere and he’ll quickly die that way instead.

The sudden return of the stomping sends Leon even further into the depths of this unrelenting terror, and he looks up to find the Tyrant marching over with murder in its eyes. A loud sob escapes Leon’s throat. There are so many different things trying to kill him right now and every single one of them is horrific.

The Tyrant lifts its foot, and Leon clenches his eyes shut and braces for the end. The resounding crunch that follows isn’t his own bones being pulverized, however, but rather the torso of the ivy. He gasps when the ivy’s teeth finally let go of him, and he immediately fights his way out of its weakening grip. The Tyrant seems more preoccupied with finishing off the ivy than killing Leon immediately, and he sees his chance for escape.

Leon tries to push himself to his feet to make a break for the exit, but he simply cries out in pain and collapses again at the excruciating agony in his side. He looks down to find the side of his uniform torn to shreds, blood pouring from the wound. He presses his hands against it, trying pointlessly to hold in the blood flow. When that doesn’t do anything, he simply tries to drag himself across the floor, crying out again with every resulting burst of agony. Rationally, he knows he isn’t going to be able to escape this way, that it would just be easier to roll over and wait for the Tyrant to come finish him off. But the adrenaline pumping through his veins and the fear saturating his brain pushes him to continue anyway.

Leon’s attention lurches back to the Tyrant as it turns away from kicking the ivy’s immobile body over the walkway and begins to approach him. He shouts incoherently as he habitually reaches for his gun, but he’s in so much pain and panic and terror that he couldn’t grip onto anything right now no matter how hard he tried, not to mention everything is slick with fresh blood. The Tyrant continues to stomp toward him, and Leon returns to trying to drag himself away. The attempt is laughable at best, and the Tyrant is soon looming over him.

“ _Nonononononopleaseno-_ “ Leon starts to sob as he thrashes his way across the floor. He knows he’s being stupid and irrational and pathetic, that he’s lashing out like a cornered animal, but the compounding stress and anxiety and fear and pain of the last day has completely ruined him. He’s beyond trying to regain control at this point. His vision is blurry, but whether it is from the tears or the blood loss or his brain completely shutting down, he isn’t sure.

Leon feels pressure against his shoulders, and he regains his senses long enough to see that the Tyrant has crouched down and grabbed him firmly in both of its massive hands. His entire body tenses like he’s being electrocuted, and he sobs.

“ _IdontwannadieIdontwannadiepleasenoohgod-_ ”

The Tyrant pulls him in, and Leon immediately starts thrashing and screaming in some final attempt to fight back that he knows won’t amount to anything. But suddenly his face is being pressed into the leather covering the Tyrant’s firm chest by a large hand, and there’s another hand at his back, and it almost feels more like an embrace than an attack, and Leon’s cries cut off with a noise of surprise.

Now that he’s stopped screaming and writhing around, he can feel the chest that is pressed against his face vibrating with a soft purr. He tenses even more than before, something he didn’t think possible. He tenses because the sound and the sensation is something that it definitely shouldn’t be: calming. He tenses because the purring is calming, and his body _wants_ to be calmed by it, to relax into it, and that terrifies him. He continues to weep uncontrollably, and his tears pool up between his flushed cheeks and the leather trench coat. He doesn’t know what he’s thinking anymore. He doesn’t know what he’s feeling anymore. He thinks he’s about to die, but he also thinks he might not die after all, and he feels terrified, but he also feels secure, and the Tyrant’s proximity is incredibly unnerving, but it’s also strangely comforting and somehow still just the tiniest bit arousing. He’s starting to forget what it feels like to not be debilitatingly conflicted about literally everything.

The hand holding Leon’s head to the Tyrant’s chest slowly starts to move. The Tyrant strokes its fingers gently through Leon’s hair as it continues purring softly, and Leon feels his body start to relax instinctively into the touch, overwhelmed by calm and comfort and… _want_. He lets out another panicked sob and forces himself to tense up again at the realization.

No. No no no. This isn’t right. This isn’t what is supposed to be happening right now. This isn’t another dream. This is real life, and this isn’t how things work in real life.

That desperation to not give in instantly vanishes, however, when Leon feels the Tyrant’s face nestling into his neck with an intense purr. Leon whimpers as he loses control and falls completely limp in the Tyrant’s arms, his mind instantly drifting to the similarity the oddly affectionate gesture shares with everything the Tyrant did in his dream. He _knows_ this isn’t another dream though. The pain and fear is too intense. He would have woken up by now. But he doesn’t understand how this is real, either. He quickly pushes away the arousal further exacerbated by the feeling of the Tyrant’s warm breath against his neck.

Leon waits for something to shift, for the Tyrant to snap and kill him, but that never happens. The Tyrant simply continues to hold him for several minutes, caressing him, purring against him. Despite all the alarms blaring in his head that this thing is just a giant powerful dangerous bioweapon monster that can’t possibly be trying to comfort him, he starts to accept that comfort anyway, unable to ignore the emotional oasis in this desert of horror. Slowly but surely, Leon’s fearful panting starts to calm into long inhales and exhales.

“… _W-what_ …?” Leon tries to speak, to question aloud what is happening. Everything once again makes no sense at all. But he struggles to even wheeze out a single word, his entire existence deeply shaken by the experience of the last several minutes.

The Tyrant pulls its face out of Leon’s neck and stops pressing his head so firmly against its chest, and Leon looks up to find it staring down at him. Leon feels himself melting under that piercing gaze. The inhuman eyes look nothing like he remembers. They’re so much softer, exuding comfort from the titan.

Leon realizes it really isn't trying to kill him.

But why? Why is it doing this? It's a weapon, it's supposed to kill people. Right? Why is it trying to _comfort_ him?

_Why is it succeeding?_

“…W-why are you…” He still can’t get out a full sentence, his voice faltering at the end.

To Leon’s surprise, it tilts its head forward and brings its forehead to rest against his own, still staring deeply into his eyes. The Tyrant inhales and purrs contently, and Leon realizes there is some kind of connection happening right now, just like the connection that was abruptly cut off in the parking garage. He realizes that the Tyrant wasn’t just hesitating then; it really wasn’t going to kill him after all. Has it _not_ been trying to kill him this entire time? Is that why it ignored him at the entrance to the sewage facility instead of killing him there too? But it was so intent on killing him when he first encountered it by the helicopter. Ben’s note said it was sent here for that very purpose, to wipe out the witnesses. Why would it change its mind like this?

Leon tries to think of something else to say, but he pauses when he sees the soft look in the Tyrant’s eyes gradually shift into something much darker. Its arms grow tense, and it emits a low, deep growl under its breath. Leon’s fear spikes again, his mind wondering if the Tyrant is starting to contemplate the same question.

Upon noticing Leon’s fear, however, the Tyrant immediately pulls back the subtle aggression and returns to its calm and comforting behaviors of purring and petting Leon’s hair. Leon forces himself to relax again, but he wonders what could have set the Tyrant off so suddenly like that.

Leon inhales sharply when the Tyrant suddenly pushes itself back to its feet, and he wraps his arms around its neck when he feels like he might fall. He doesn’t fall, though. The Tyrant shifts its arms to hold him securely against its body, continuing to purr and touch until the brief moment of panic passes. The Tyrant then starts to move across the walkway with heavy footsteps.

“W-where are we g-going?” Leon finally manages to stammer out his first coherent sentence.

The Tyrant doesn’t answer, and Leon concludes that his guess regarding its inability to speak was correct. The Tyrant instead presses its face against the side of Leon’s head, nuzzling his hair with another soft purr, and Leon lets out a whimper at the warmth the gesture inadvertently sparks in him.

Rather than continuing down the walkway to the main greenhouse exit, the Tyrant takes a detour along the side path leading to the drug testing lab. It pushes its way through the door, stops briefly to scan the room, and stomps over to gently lean Leon’s body against the bare wall beside the chemical dispersal unit he got the herbicide solution from. Leon winces in pain as the Tyrant adjusts him to sit comfortably, and the Tyrant makes a low noise of discontent.

Leon simply watches as the Tyrant turns away and approaches the dead body wearing a hazmat suit in the corner. It throws the corpse over its shoulder and marches back to the door to toss it out into the greenhouse. Leon would laugh at the thought that the Tyrant cares to keep things tidy if only he wasn't so busy being confused and terrified right now. With the body gone, the Tyrant then starts to pull the doors off the locked laboratory cabinets to rummage through the contents, pushing aside glassware and micropipettes and tinted containers of various chemicals, clearly searching for something. With the Tyrant distracted, Leon takes a moment to look down and examine his wound more closely. It isn’t bleeding as heavily now that his heart isn’t beating out of his chest, but it’s still bad. Really bad. Bad enough that he isn’t going to be capable of doing anything until he treats and dresses it first, lest he bleed to death.

Leon digs through his pockets and retrieves his single first aid spray, the one he has been keeping on him since finding it in Ben’s prison cell, saving it in case of emergencies. This seems like enough of an emergency, and he starts to shake the can. He pauses, however, when he realizes it feels empty. He pushes the nozzle experimentally, and sure enough, nothing comes out. How the hell did that happen? Leon sighs and rolls the can across the floor. He’s out of herbs, too. He’s fucked.

He looks back over to find the Tyrant’s upper body buried inside one of the cabinets beneath the sink, the monster huffing irritably. The massive figure trying to fit in the tiny space looks ridiculous, almost pathetic. It’s bizarre that Leon finds being in the same room as the Tyrant more amusing than terrifying right now.

This is also quite a nice view of its ass.

_Stop it, Leon._

Leon glances at the door. The Tyrant seems pretty distracted right now, and he could probably sneak away, but he quickly decides against it for a couple of reasons. First of all, it would be incredibly stupid. His injury would prevent him from getting very far before the Tyrant saw he was gone and easily caught up to him. Second, though, is his curiosity regarding the unknown reason for the Tyrant’s strange shift in behavior. He glances back at the monster when it grunts with frustration, seemingly struggling with whatever it’s doing under the sink.

“M-my name is Leon.”

Leon feels stupid the second the words mindlessly slip out of his mouth. Why did he feel the need to introduce himself? He doubts the Tyrant cares.

It pauses, though. It falls silent, simply sitting half-submerged in the cabinet, unmoving. Leon wonders if it’s stuck in there.

“W-what are you d-doing under there? Are you stuck?” Why is he talking to it so normally? It isn't like it's going to sit down and have a conversation with him. It probably doesn't even understand what he's saying.

The Tyrant pulls itself back out of the cabinet, hitting its head on the way out and knocking off its hat. It growls angrily as several items in its arms clatter to the floor. It carefully places the hat back on its head, then starts to retrieve the items it just dropped. When they just keep falling out of its arms every time it tries to pick another one up, it eventually drops them all again with an annoyed grumble. It stomps over to another one of the cabinets and pulls out what looks like a fresh lab coat, returns to the mess on the floor and piles the items into the fabric, then rolls it up into a makeshift package and stomps back over to Leon. Leon instinctively tenses and squishes himself against the wall with a terrified whimper at its approach, but it simply plops down on the floor facing him and crosses its legs casually. It opens its arms, and the items in the lab coat tumble out onto Leon’s lap.

Leon gawks. The lab coat was wrapped around a few rolls of gauze and a _whole goddamn arsenal_ of first aid sprays.

“I-I…”

The Tyrant reaches out and grabs Leon’s RPD vest to tug at the straps, and Leon’s breath hitches as he tries to push the massive hands away.

“W-wait, what are you doing?”

The Tyrant huffs impatiently at Leon's hands fighting back against it. It points to one of the first aid sprays, then points to a roll of gauze, then points to Leon’s bloody side.

“O-oh.”

The Tyrant doesn’t wait for Leon to retract his protests, instead going straight back to pulling the vest from his body. Leon is too dumbfounded to do anything about it, simply sitting there stupidly as the Tyrant removes the vest and the guns on his person, then removes the padding at his elbows, then starts to work at the buttons of his uniform. It grunts with frustration, its massive fingers unable to easily manipulate the small pieces of plastic.

“Here, l-let me d-do it.” Leon's face turns red as soon as he makes the offer. He tells himself that he's only offering to do such a thing because he doubts he can deter the Tyrant from its determined mission, and the Tyrant will just break all the buttons if he doesn't intervene. But he's also aware that he's settling into a foolish passiveness. It seems obvious enough that the Tyrant doesn't intend to murder him anymore, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea to become even more vulnerable around it. He can't believe how quickly he's adapted to the weird calm of the situation. He's abandoned his inhibitions regarding the monster's presence _so_ quickly, in fact, that now he's offering to take his clothes off for the damn thing. In a non-sexual manner, of course.

The Tyrant huffs again, but it pulls its hands away so that Leon can unbutton the uniform instead. His hands are much less shaky now, although they still tremble a little as they unbutton the shirt. He shrugs it from his shoulders and places it on the floor beside himself, and the Tyrant is immediately on him again, pulling his undershirt up his torso, taking care when pulling it away from the wound.

“U-uh, um…”

Leon simply stammers awkwardly as the shirt is yanked the rest of the way over his head, leaving his torso completely exposed and vulnerable. He feels himself getting flustered, blood rushing to his cheeks. He scolds himself. _This isn't sexual. This isn't sexual. That was just a dream. This isn't sexual._

“Uh, I-“

He cuts himself off when the Tyrant slowly raises a hand to the blood-soaked gauze wrapped around his shoulder with an upset-sounding hum. Leon looks between the bandaging and the Tyrant’s eyes, and the gears in his head turn until reality suddenly hits him like a freight train.

“Oh. Oh my g-god. You…” Leon points a shaking finger to the bandaging. “You did this… d-didn’t you?” The Tyrant looks back at him, and Leon swallows a lump in his throat. “You… You’re the one who saved me in the sewers, aren’t you?”

The Tyrant nods.

Leon’s eyes widen. “You can unders-stand me?”

Another nod.

Before Leon can interrogate the Tyrant any further, it grabs him by the arm and pushes him down onto his side, sending several of the cans on his lap rolling onto the floor. Leon gasps and starts to protest, but then the Tyrant presses the lab coat against the open wound to clean away the blood, and he forces himself to calm back down. It’s just treating the injury, it isn’t going to hurt him. Once the coat has soaked up all the excess blood, the Tyrant throws it aside and reaches for one of the first aid sprays. After giving it a good shake, the Tyrant pushes the nozzle and covers the wound with the cold liquid. Leon tenses and inhales through his teeth at the excruciating stinging, but it quickly fades into a pleasant numbness by the time the can is depleted, the chemicals already starting to do their job. The Tyrant pushes Leon back into an upright position but pulls him away from the wall slightly so that it can wrap the gauze around his body, just tight enough to help stop the bleeding but not so tight to the point of discomfort. Leon watches the roll of gauze disappearing behind his body on one side, then reemerging on the other, shifting between both the Tyrant’s gloved hands. Already he feels his senses coming back to him. His breath and his voice are finally steadying again.

“Why are you doing this?” he whispers.

The Tyrant finishes wrapping the wound and rips off the gauze from the rest of the roll, then looks down at Leon with a slight tilt of the head.

“Why are you helping me?”

The Tyrant doesn’t respond, as Leon figured it wouldn’t. It instead reaches down into the front of its trench coat and pulls out an item that is quickly deposited in Leon’s lap. He picks it up and examines it. It’s a box of bullets.

“I…”

The Tyrant retrieves one more item, this time handing it directly to Leon. He tentatively reaches out a shaking hand and takes it. It’s a snack bar. The same kind that was left for him in the monitor room. When Leon looks back up at the Tyrant’s eyes, it looks like a cat that just proudly brought a dead bird into the house and is eagerly waiting for praise. Leon realizes the bullets and the food are some kind of gift. It’s oddly… cute. But he still doesn’t know why the Tyrant would be giving him supplies like this, or why it left him all the supplies in the monitor room, let alone why it decided it isn't interested in killing him anymore.

“I… Thank you, but… I don’t understand.”

The Tyrant lets out an incredibly exasperated grunt, like this should be completely obvious and it doesn't understand why Leon isn't getting it. It seems annoyed that it can’t just speak its mind, that it has to try to communicate with sounds and gestures and objects. Leon almost feels bad for it. It must be awful to have all your thoughts trapped in your head like that. He tries to think of questions he could ask that might lead it in the direction of a decipherable answer.

“Hey, it's okay, let's start with something simpler. Do you... have a name?”

The Tyrant shuffles for a moment, then grabs at the collar of its trench coat and pulls it back to reveal a small bit of text engraved into a small metal plate, like a military dog tag sewn into the fabric.

> _T-103-00_

Leon frowns. “That’s a code. That’s not a name.”

The Tyrant simply huffs and readjusts the leather coat, not seeming to care.

“Well if you’re helping me, then I have to have _something_ to call you,” Leon states. “And I’m not calling you T-one-three-… uh, whatever it was.” Leon looks around, trying to find some inspiration. His eyes settle on the lab coat, the tag sticking out plainly. It’s upside-down from here, but Leon can clearly read the three big letters printed in bold: XXL. Leon snorts. The Tyrant’s clothes are probably more like XXXXXL.

_Hm…_

“I’m calling you X.”

The Tyrant tilts its head and lets out a noise that almost sounds inquisitive, and Leon snorts again, astounded by how clearly he can interpret emotion from the thing.

“Like, the letter.” Leon reaches over to grab the lab coat, then holds out the tag for the Tyrant to see. “Because you’re extra extra large or something.”

The Tyrant stares down at the tag and squints, and Leon can see the lost confusion on its face.

“Can… Can you not read?”

The Tyrant shakes its head no.

“Oh.” Leon isn’t sure why that’s such a surprise to him. He shakes it off, though, and points to one of the X’s on the tag. “It’s this one.”

The Tyrant stares for a moment longer, then leans back and lifts its hands to cross its pointer fingers into an X. It's a gesture that fully cements Leon's previous contemplation of just how strangely human this thing is. Beyond its distantly human appearance, now it is _helping_ him. _Communicating_ with him. Showing _impatience_ and _curiosity_ and a propensity to _learn_. It comforts Leon; the vaguely human mannerisms make it slightly more believable that it really isn't going to kill him at this point.

“Yeah, like that. The more X’s there are in front of the last letter, the bigger the clothes are. Or the smaller, sometimes, but that’s not important.” Leon watches as the Tyrant lowers its hands, continuing to stare at the tag like it’s trying to internalize that information. “So, uh… Is X okay? Can I call you that?”

The Tyrant snorts, almost seeming amused, and nods its head.

No… _His_ head. He has a name now. So he’s a person. And a person isn’t an ‘it’.

This is so weird.

Leon takes a deep breath. “Okay… X… Uh…”

He tries to think of something else to ask. He wants to get back to his original question of why, exactly, X is helping him. The Tyrant doesn’t strike him as particularly selfless, with him being a bioweapon assigned to murder every living person he finds and all that. Does he see himself gleaning some kind of personal benefit from helping Leon? Maybe he needs Leon’s help too?

“Is there something you want?”

Leon immediately contemplates if there is a better question to ask, a question that is easier to answer without words, like a yes or no question. But he doesn’t have time to think of a better question, because X jumps eagerly at the current question. Perhaps _too_ eagerly. Leon feels something against his chest, and he looks down to find X’s finger jabbing into his sternum.

“Me? What about me?”

X hums deeply as he shifts his hand, flattening his palm and fingers against Leon’s chest. X’s palms alone are as big as each of Leon’s pectorals. The feeling of the cool leather against his bare skin sends a shiver down Leon’s spine, but he tries hard to focus.

“Yes, me, I get it. But what do you want me to…”

Leon trails off as something catches his eye, and his gaze drifts slightly upward to X’s hat. The dim lighting of the room is shining through a small hole in the rim.

…

That can’t…

…

…

Leon is suddenly overwhelmed by a dread so intense that it feels like he's about to vomit. He looks down at his hip, tugging the hem of his pants down slightly and wincing at how tender the skin is. Several finger-shaped bruises stare back up at him. He frantically turns to the pile of clothes and equipment sitting on the floor beside him and starts to rummage around until he locates Matilda. He holds the gun loosely in his hands, scanning it over, and it finally hits him why he’s been having so much trouble with it all night.

It isn’t Matilda.

Because he shot a hole in the rim of X’s hat with Matilda.

So X crushed Matilda.

And then X jerked him off.

And then he jerked X off.

And X gripped Leon’s hip so hard when he came that it left fucking bruises.

And that’s why X decided not to kill him in the parking garage.

And that’s why X helped him in the sewage facility and built him a goddamn _nest_ and left him all those _offerings_.

And that’s why X saved his life in the greenhouse.

That’s why X is comforting him.

Because Leon taught X how to orgasm.

And now X wants him.

Because it wasn’t a dream.

Because Leon is a _massive fucking idiot_.

Leon is snapped back into focus when X moves his hand up to Leon’s good shoulder and shakes him slightly with a grumble, apparently concerned by the fact that Leon just completely dissociated from the present. Leon stares up at the Tyrant with wide eyes. Everything makes sense now. Everything makes so much goddamn sense.

He wanted everything to make sense so much, but now that he has all the answers, he just feels even more conflicted. It wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t a dream. Leon really did that. _They_ really did that. Leon feels himself starting to shake slightly, his breaths growing unsteady. It wasn’t a dream. _He wanted to do it. He consciously chose to do it._ _He enjoyed it. It was the most intense orgasm he’d ever had in his entire fucking life._ Leon feels like he is losing all control of reality as his mind races over this revelation. He’d thought it was a dream because he’d had dreams like that in the past… Not about monsters, but about…

Well, men.

And he always shook it off, pushed it deep down where he could ignore it, because certainly it was just some weird phase rooted in adolescent confusion. He doesn’t care at all if other people are into that sort of thing, but _him_? He isn’t like that. He _can’t_ be like that. He’s supposed to be a goddamn _cop_ , for crying out loud.

But it never went away. It would crawl its way back into his mind as he spent time growing close to his fellow trainees at the police academy, as he passed by the magazine racks in the checkout lanes of the grocery store and found his eyes drawn to the male models on the covers instead of the female ones, as he would sit across from disgruntled girlfriends as they dumped him over not being invested enough in the relationship for them to stick around, as he would lay on the bed or the sofa next to them prior to those breakups and stare at the ceiling wondering why none of them could ever fulfill him.

Maybe the reason it never went away, the reason it would always find a way to crawl back into his mind, the reason he froze up when Ada kissed him, the reason his encounter with X back at the RPD was so electrifyingly euphoric, the reason he loses all control every time the Tyrant is around, the reason he feels so hot and bothered even now, is that it’s _true_.

Is he really in such intense denial that he managed to genuinely fool himself into thinking a core explanation for the night’s events never actually happened? Is he really in such intense denial that he was willing to break heart after heart after heart in the pursuit of something he’d never actually want?

Leon startles when X pulls back, giving another concerned grumble. Leon’s eyes scan over the Tyrant’s complexion. Like always, his face is completely blank, completely unreadable, just expressionless and gray. But his eyes… Looking into those eyes is like trying to see through a foggy window. Leon knows there is something on the other side, but it is difficult to make out without knowing what to look for. But he knows what to look for now, and it’s obviously there.

They stare at him with an incredible intensity. For one thing, there is intense worry, perhaps for Leon’s physical well-being or current mental fortitude. Beyond that there is intense protectiveness, intense dedication, intense determination, even intense adoration. And enveloping all of it is intense _desire_.

They're beautiful eyes, really.

Leon wonders if his own eyes reflect the same desire to X. Feeling the purring against his body, the fingers running through his hair, the powerful embrace around his smaller form, the hot breath against his skin, it all makes him feel warm in a way that is completely unfamiliar but that he really likes, a way that he's been searching for but has never been able to find.

He has to settle this uncertainty eventually, or it will just continue to torment him for the rest of his life. There’s an answer to this question about himself that he _wants_ , the answer that he's forced himself into believing. But the truth is likely something entirely different, and that’s the answer that he _needs_ , whether he wants it or not.

He has an idea on how to easily settle this, and it's incredibly dumb, but he needs to do it. If what he’s about to try doesn’t make him feel something, then maybe he really is just confused. But if it does do things to him, then he’ll simply have to accept the reality that he’s been denying for so long.

Leon pushes himself away from the wall and brings his lips to X’s.

X seems surprised by the sudden move. He seems lost, too, and Leon realizes that the Tyrant has probably never done anything like this before. He didn’t know what masturbation was, so surely it’s possible that he doesn’t know what kissing is either. Leon tries to guide X, bringing a hand up to the side of the Tyrant’s head to steady himself as he kisses with slow, exaggerated movements. X grunts, and Leon feels X’s lips twitch slightly against his own, like the Tyrant is trying to mimic the motions but isn’t sure how. Leon pulls away for a second to breathe, and when he goes back, X finally manages to move his lips enough to reciprocate.

It’s stiff, rough, unexperienced, uncertain. But X is kissing back, and nothing else matters, because Leon is _melting_. He finds himself pushing deeper into the motions as he throws his other hand over the Tyrant’s shoulder to pull him closer. The contact feels so warm. So _right_. After a while, Leon pulls away to gasp for air, only to return to making out with X half a second later. X purrs even louder at the display of enthusiasm. Never before has Leon kissed anyone with such passion, such pure hunger, like X’s mouth is his only source of oxygen. Just like in the RPD, he’s losing all control, and it’s terrifying, but it also feels _incredible_.

That settles it, then. He can’t deny the truth any longer.

Leon Scott Kennedy is gay, and he exchanged hand jobs with an unbelievably masculine bioweapon, and now he’s making out with that bioweapon, and he’s enjoying every second of it, and that’s simply the fact of the matter, and anyone who has any complaints is just going to have to get used to it, himself included.

X is the one to break the kiss in order to lower his face back to Leon’s neck, and Leon shudders as X inhales deeply. Seemingly content with the scent that greets him, X purrs harder and wraps his arms around Leon’s body. Leon tenses slightly. Now that Leon knows that everything that happened at the RPD was real, he also knows that X can smell his shifting hormones, and he has no idea how the Tyrant is going to react now that they’ve already had one experience together. Will X… Will X want to go _all the way_?

Is Leon even ready for that?

He was certainly ready in the brief dream that first got him horny for the Tyrant and started this whole mess in the first place. And he was certainly ready in every other wet dream he’s had about this throughout his life. But those were dreams, not reality. He hasn’t even dared to dabble in this kind of porn. He has no idea what to expect from reality. He has no idea how he’ll actually react to something like that. Would it be taking this personal revelation much too fast? Shouldn't he take some time to come to terms with it first?

As if this wasn’t complicated enough already, Leon feels a habitual shame rising up as he thinks about whether he’s ready for this or not. He hates that his body is telling him that this is so, so right while his mind continues to tell him that this is so, so wrong. Will that shame ever go away? Will his personal convictions ever sync with his identity? Will he ever be in the right place to feel comfortable with what he wants? _Who_ he wants?

But there’s also a certain giddiness in his stomach at the thought of finally figuring it all out. X has saved his life twice, provided for him, kept him safe. And just as X did during that first encounter at the helicopter, he still exudes a certain sense of collectedness and self-control, the only difference being that it is now oriented in a more intimate sense than a murderous one. Not to mention that X had every opportunity to have his way with Leon when he was knocked unconscious in the sewage facility, but he didn't for one reason or another. As stupid as this may have sounded just an hour ago, Leon wants to trust X. Maybe Leon is being impulsive and desperate because of all these years of confusion and self-denial and pent-up sexual frustration, or maybe he's being impulsive and desperate because X is so incredible and awe-inducing and undeniably kinky.

And X really is something incredible. Leon feels like X's design was probably intended to be unsettling; he's sitting quite contently somewhere in the uncanny valley with that gray skin and wrinkled face and silver gaze and lack of body hair. But to Leon, the unsettling nature of X always hinged more on his intent to brutally kill him. Now that that intent is clearly gone, X is hardly unsettling at all in Leon's eyes. Leon might even dare to call the bioweapon _hot_ , with that massive form and evidently muscular build outlined by the tight black leather. He's so impossibly powerful, so impressively strong. The gray skin doesn't even look sick, per say. Just... different. And his eyes...

Leon could admittedly stare into those eyes forever.

On top of that is the fact that somehow X is unexpectedly _caring_ , at least to Leon. It's almost endearing, from the way he so proudly presented his gifts to Leon to the way he built a literal nest out of shirts. The purrs, the petting and nuzzling, the apparent adoring fixation on his scent, Leon would never have expected behavior like that from a literal monster. But that's exactly the behavior he's getting, and it's... good. It's very, very good. All things considered, Leon's tempted to just sit back for the ride and see where this goes. He thinks he might be perfectly content to let X do whatever the fuck he wants to do with him.

Even if that means going all the way.

He decides he won’t push for it, but if X ends up wanting to do that… well, he’s willing to let the bioweapon try. Leon always was the kind of guy to jump straight into the cold water, after all. Otherwise he probably would have turned around at the first sign of zombies at the gas station, and then he wouldn’t have ended up here at all. And if it's anything like the dream... It'll be worth it, right?

That doesn’t shake away the shame though. And the nervousness. The self-consciousness. The fear. He really hopes those things go away with time.

Leon takes a deep breath, and although X continues to hold Leon, he pulls back enough to look at him. Leon stares up into the Tyrant’s chilling gaze and tentatively reaches his arms around his massive torso, if not to ground himself then to at least make this feel a little more _normal_.

Returning X's embrace feels... very nice.

“I think I understand," Leon whispers. "You... You’re saying you just want… _me_.”

X leans in to touch Leon’s forehead with his own again, his silvery gaze growing in intensity, his throat emitting a low growl that could almost be interpreted as seductive. Even if Leon was unsure of the exact extent of X's intentions before, it seems obvious enough now.

All the way.

Leon knows that this is either going to be the best decision of his life or the absolute worst. It will be a first, for sure, but it might also be a _last_. He takes a slow, deep breath before he speaks again. His voice shakes. Maybe from fearful nervousness. Maybe from excitement. Maybe from both.

“Then… You can have me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm making y'all wait one more week for the smut :')  
> This turned into such a slow-burn and I'M NOT SORRY


	10. Warm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have revised this thing like TEN TIMES and I think I just need to post it already.
> 
> It's over 10,000 words because I can't control myself *crying*

_Leon_.

The human male’s name is _Leon_.

It almost didn’t register when the male first said it. T-00 had to pause and replay his memory of the sound a few times in his head for it to really settle.

It is a good name. He isn’t actually sure what constitutes a good name, but it feels good in his head nonetheless. He got lost in it for a while, repeating it over and over, forgetting for entire seconds that he was supposed to be gathering the first aid sprays he found while half-crammed beneath the sink. The male still spoke to him in a way that was so much softer than he was used to.

 _Leon_.

And Leon decided to give T-00 a name. Not a code. A name.

 _X_.

The male’s explanation of letters on clothes didn’t make much sense, but T-00 gathered that this specific letter refers to the fact that he is extremely large. Such a name is certainly befitting of a Tyrant. It is now the only letter that he can visually identify other than T and G. It is the only letter he _needs_ to identify, the only letter he _wants_ to identify, because it is now _him_.

He found it a little amusing at first that the male insisted on giving him a name. But the longer he considered it, the more he realized the significance of the act. Perhaps the male was right when he said that T-00 isn’t truly a name. T-00 had never really thought about it before. It never mattered before. But the act of being named beyond a numerical designation, the fact that the male deemed the issue significant enough to address at all, makes it feel like something very important has occurred even if T-00 doesn’t understand why.

T-00 – no, _X_ – made substantial progress after bringing the male – _Leon_ – to this place of refuge. It hurt to watch Leon cowering against the wall at X’s approach, fighting against the treatment of his injuries, stammering out all his words. The lingering fear and apprehension served as a sobering reminder of where X had come from in all this, how Leon had once been nothing more than another survivor to exterminate. X had to try very hard not to grow fixated on the dark bruises now very apparent at Leon’s throat. The thought that those were put there by his own hand makes X feel sick, but dwelling on regret won’t accomplish anything.

He did finally succeed in calming Leon and tending to his injuries, though. There was some extent of communication established throughout the process, at least enough for Leon to realize that X can understand English just fine. Leon managed to figure out that X doesn’t want to kill him anymore. Leon also managed to figure out that X was his caretaker in the sewage facility. But even then, Leon didn’t understand _why_.

The limited communication was indescribably frustrating. X protected Leon, provided for Leon. But Leon still didn’t understand even after X directly offered him the bullets and the food. Leon did smell somewhat excited, but it wasn’t nearly as strong as before, and he otherwise seemed disinterested. Certainly X was doing something wrong. Was this not how a human mate was supposed to be courted? What else could Leon need from him in order for the intentions to become clear? Everything would be so much simpler if he could just talk. When Leon directly asked what it was that he wanted, he didn’t hesitate at all in his response, excitedly reaching out to indicate that _Leon_ was what he wanted.

And now, even after such a clear declaration, Leon still seems confused. As X watches Leon stammer out more questions, he begins to wonder if he is supposed to make his advances unprompted at this point.

Leon quickly trails off from his questioning, though, and starts to rummage around his discarded possessions. X can see intense deduction occurring in Leon’s head through the look on his face. After some time, that internal evaluation finally culminates into a look of realization.

X is quickly catapulted into concern when Leon freezes up in front of him, instantly lost in some distant process of thought and emotion. X tries to reel him back by shaking his shoulder and grumbling at him. It works well enough to bring the perception back to his eyes, but he still doesn’t move or speak or make sound. He instead stares intensely into X’s own eyes with an emotion that is completely unknown to X.

Leon almost seems afraid, in a sense. His eyes are wide and trembling, but it looks different than the fear X is used to seeing in humans. There is no scent of fear hormones either. It is like Leon isn’t afraid of any tangible threat but is rather unsettled by something else that X can’t figure out.

X is so engrossed in trying to decipher Leon’s not-fear that he is completely caught off-guard by Leon’s strange and sudden outburst that follows. X doesn’t understand what Leon is doing when he presses his mouth against X’s mouth and moves his lips in a methodical manner, but it makes X feel the same twinge of pleased calmness that he derived from trailing his lips along Leon’s bare neck in the monitor room. Considering the response the action triggers in him, it must be yet another human courtship ritual that X is unfamiliar with. While X is slightly thrown off by the addition of yet another uncertainty to this endeavor, he’s also incredibly excited that he is finally receiving some indication of interest.

X finds himself desperately wanting to reciprocate the gesture, but it is frustratingly awkward. He can’t speak, and he never emotes; the only time he ever moves his mouth is the infrequent occasion when he needs to eat, barring the time he instinctively snarled at the G-zombie in the sewers. His facial muscles simply aren’t accustomed to such complicated movements. Still, he keeps trying, and his lips eventually start to cooperate, albeit with stiffness and difficulty.

He seems to do well enough, though, because his attempt is met with great enthusiasm from Leon. The activity feels so much better now that both their mouths are moving _together_ , and X purrs loudly as Leon reaches out to pull him closer. This caressing of lips is a bizarre ritual that X never would have even considered without Leon’s prompting. He certainly never would have expected it to be so pleasurable. But it is, and it’s wonderful in ways he couldn’t have ever imagined.

He has only interacted closely and consciously with Leon twice now, yet Leon has already taught him about so many new things that make him feel good: smelling, purring, touching, holding, petting, hand-copulating, lip-caressing. It makes him realize that there are still so many good things that he doesn’t understand, good things that he has yet to discover, good things that Umbrella never wanted him to experience as he slaved away under their orders until his inevitable destruction.

X knows so little, and Leon knows so much. X wants to learn all of it.

X forces himself to pull away from Leon’s lips so that he can take in Leon’s scent again. The powerful sweetness that fills his nostrils makes his mind go hazy, and those intoxicating hormones drive him to move without even thinking about it. He wraps his arms around Leon and pulls their bodies together, purring intensely into Leon’s soft neck. Leon tenses slightly, but X doesn’t let go. He doesn’t want to let go, he doesn’t want to ever let go.

Even though X still doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing or what a human expects from the consummation of matehood, he’s confident that his efforts are culminating into something incomprehensibly potent. Leon’s hormones are so enticing, his touch so warm, his reciprocation so fulfilling. This is what X wants, he’s never been so certain of anything else in his short existence. X wants Leon. He wants everything Leon has to give.

At the feeling of Leon’s arms wrapping loosely around his body in return, X pulls his face away to look Leon in the eyes.

“I think I understand. You... You’re saying you just want… _me_.”

X feels a wave of excited relief at the verbal confirmation of Leon’s understanding. He touches his forehead to Leon’s and stares deep into Leon’s eyes, trying to communicate his own enthusiastic affirmation. As Leon’s hormones continue to flood his system, he feels a growing desperation in his core, an instinctual _need_. He feels so hungry, like he’s been starved for months and the only thing that can satiate him is _Leon_. X unconsciously growls deep in his throat, a sound that is intensely predatory in nature. He tries to stop once he realizes he’s doing it; the last thing he needs to do right now is scare Leon again. But Leon doesn’t react to the sound with fear this time. Rather, Leon seems drawn in by it as he takes another deep breath and opens his mouth to whisper five more quivering words.

“Then… You can have me.”

Clearly X was incorrect when he feared he was doing something wrong. Clearly he did something very, very _right_. After all this time, all this worry, all this physical effort, all this thinking and feeling and longing, X has finally proven his competence as a prospective mate. Leon’s behaviors and hormones and words are all concurring as an expression of unmistakable receptiveness. His eyes still shake with the not-fear, but there’s also a paradoxical clash of excitement and calm swirling through that gorgeous blue. A softness. A want. An incomprehensible yet beautiful human complexity.

It feels like X is just now hearing the world clearly for the first time, like every sound he ever heard before was nothing more than muffled, insignificant noise. And perhaps it was. What could possibly be significant to a faceless, nameless drone?

He doesn’t want to be a faceless, nameless drone anymore. He doesn’t want to be T-00.

He wants to be _X_.

And to Leon, that’s exactly what he is. _Who_ he is.

 _X_.

Leon has offered himself to X, and X will gladly take him. Still, after working so hard for this, X doesn’t want to ruin any of it with reckless haste. He longs to lay claim to Leon, but he wants to do it studiously enough that he can ingrain it into his mind. He wants to do it slowly enough that he can experience everything there is to experience and savor all of it.

X lifts a hand to Leon’s face. The movement is calm and calculated, X still trying very hard not to frighten the human even though they seem to be well past that now. His fingers trail curiously along Leon’s cheek. He presses in gently, fascinated by the give of the soft skin.

He doesn’t just want to touch, though. He wants to _feel_.

He quickly pulls his hand away, then removes both his gloves to toss them to the side. Both hands move back to Leon’s face to touch and poke and pull some more, awkwardly appraising the softness and malleability. His calculated caution is already so much less than it was seconds ago, drowned out by curiosity and desire. Leon’s face is so pleasantly warm, so pleasantly soft aside from the smallest hint of the night’s stubble, untarnished by the scars and wrinkles and roughness of injury or age or genetic mutation.

Leon stares up at him, appearing equally fascinated that X is so intrigued by features that are surely mundane to any human. It isn’t mundane to X, though. X has never been allowed so close to a living human before, free to explore and learn as he pleases. He knew humans are fragile and weak in comparison to himself, but he never knew how soft they are. How warm. How pliable. He realizes that he doesn’t know nearly as much about humans as he thought. In all honesty, most of his knowledge consists of how humans behave when threatened and how to efficiently kill them. Perhaps that is by design. Perhaps Umbrella anticipated that he might not be so keen on mindlessly crushing and strangulating humans if he learned too much about them, because then he might figure out that they can offer him pleasure and independence instead of simply pain and control.

X grunts with surprise when he feels Leon’s tongue poking back from the inside of one of his cheeks, and the reaction makes the corners of Leon’s lips twitch into the tiniest smile of humored amusement. X purrs and moves his fingers to touch Leon’s lips, intrigued by the way they move and express so naturally. He’s seen people smile at each other in Umbrella’s labs on very rare occasions, but those people wouldn’t smile at _him_ , only scowl or grimace or make no expression at all. He never cared about expressions, so it never mattered. But something about this smile being directed at him is different. It feels good, like positive reinforcement for something he’s done right. How is it that being the recipient of a simple facial expression can feel so rewarding?

Leon parts his lips slightly, and X’s determination to explore leads him to slip a thumb into Leon’s mouth without much thought. The human doesn’t seem surprised, though. Rather, it seems that this is what he was expecting X to do based on how calmly he closes his lips around the digit and starts to curl his tongue around it. X hums thoughtfully at the strange sensation. He’s taken aback by just how dexterous Leon’s tongue is compared to his own, but he’s also astounded by how nice it feels. He runs his thumb along Leon’s teeth. He presses against the inside of Leon’s cheek and observes how it distends from the outside. Leon’s mouth is warm and wet and new and fascinating and wonderful, and X wants more of it.

X pulls his thumb out of Leon’s mouth and leans forward to press their lips together again. Leon inhales sharply at the suddenness of the action but quickly relaxes into passionate reciprocation. As Leon’s lips caress back, his tongue also continues to prove its versatility. X feels the warm muscle slipping out of Leon’s mouth and darting tentatively against his lips, and he eagerly reciprocates as best as he can and purrs as their tongues touch. It spurs on a rapid increase in the passion of the movements that completely overwhelms X’s palate with the pure taste and smell of Leon’s untainted essence. X grunts irritably when Leon pulls away to breath, and Leon chuckles under his breath.

“You really like kissing, don’t you?”

X tilts his head slightly with an interested hum at the word. If that’s what this lip-caressing and tongue-sharing is called, then… Yes, he very much enjoys… _kissing_.

One of Leon’s own hands reaches up to X’s face. Leon slowly touches the rough skin, traces the odd textures, trails his fingers along the bare gray where eyebrows should be but are absent. X purrs and leans into the exploratory caresses, and it makes Leon subtly smile again. X stares intently at how that smile reflects more clearly in Leon’s eyes than in his lips, and Leon’s breath catches slightly under the sharp gaze.

“God, your eyes…” Leon’s voice shakes as his hand slowly moves to hold the side of X’s face in his palm. “…They’re… beautiful…” He follows the admission with a flustered laugh, like he’s embarrassed to admit such a thing aloud, but the truthfulness of his admiration is evident enough thanks to the awestruck look on his face.

X finds Leon’s blatant praise to be incredibly pleasing. But despite the faint smiles and passionate reciprocation and verbal veneration, Leon also maintains that look of not-fear from before, his face flushed, his eyes wide and trembling. X wishes he knew what emotion the expression portrays. It seems more like a deep anxiety than anything else, but that description still isn’t quite right on its own. X leans down to press his lips to Leon’s again – to _kiss_ him – in hopes of easing away that unknown emotion.

Leon wraps his arms around X’s neck to pull him deeper into the kiss. X wants to be closer too. He pushes forward with another low purr, imposing himself into Leon’s physical space until the small human falls backward onto his elbows with a quiet gasp. X shifts to his knees as he starts to roam his hands across Leon’s body, taking care to avoid the old wound on his shoulder and the fresh wound on his side. Leon’s toned muscles feel so stiff beneath his smooth skin, aching and exhausted from hours of physical exertion. X presses his fingers into the tensest areas, and he can feel Leon relax under his touch as he works out the kinks. The human eventually falls the rest of the way onto his back with a shaking sigh.

“ _Mmmh_ … That… feels nice, X.”

Pushed onward by the positive response, X leans down with another purr. He starts to kiss at the skin of Leon’s shoulders and neck instead of his lips, taking care around his bruises, and Leon gasps again. Leon smells so good, tastes so good, and X finds that these movements aren’t getting those stimulants into his system fast enough. He starts to suck and bite and lick instead, desperate to fill himself with Leon’s alluring scent and flavor, and Leon squirms and mewls beneath him. It makes all of X’s primal instincts stir awake and start to scream throughout his body.

“F-fuck… You sure learn fast…”

X’s desire for Leon is suddenly so fervid that every additional second that passes is beginning to feel torturous, and that desire only continues to escalate with every touch of the male’s soft skin, every breath of the male’s delightful hormones, every needy sound that falls from the male’s lips. X emits a low, guttural growl into Leon’s neck, and Leon wraps his arms tightly around X’s massive body with a whine. The contact, the sound, it sends X falling over an instinctual edge he never knew existed.

He _needs_ Leon.

Leon shudders with a quiet noise of surprise, and X realizes that he’s begun to mindlessly pull at Leon’s pants. X looks back at Leon’s face to closer assess the reaction. Is he being too aggressive? Almost every part of him aches to just abandon all sense of control and follow these animalistic instincts, to take what he’s been offered and ravage the delicate body beneath him. But there’s still some part of him that wants to draw out the pleasure in order to savor and appreciate it. There’s another part of him that recognizes Leon’s timid disposition, and that part of him doesn’t want to scare the human, or worse, _break_ him.

Leon’s surprise softens as he takes a deep breath. “You really do want to…” The words seem to be spoken more to himself than to X.

Perhaps X isn’t being too aggressive then? Perhaps he’s simply starting to get his point across more clearly? X growls hungrily and gives Leon’s pants another experimental tug, interested in how the human will respond now that the surprise has passed. Leon gasps this time. Alongside the not-fear, his face cycles through a series of additional emotions before settling on something quite bold and perhaps desperate.

“…Fuck it.”

Leon lets go of X to remove his fingerless gloves and throw them aside. His hands then redirect to his pants, frantically working at the zipper holding them closed with a feeble shakiness that nearly compromises his dexterity entirely. He does get it open eventually, though, and he immediately starts trying to push the fabric down his hips and legs. If his small huffs of frustration and grunts of pain are anything to go by, he is greatly struggling to accomplish this without putting too much strain on his injury. X leans back to watch the struggle with concern, at least until Leon eventually falls limp again with a defeated sigh. Leon looks up at X with quivering eyes.

“Uh, c-can… Can you take it off for me?”

X eagerly obliges to Leon’s request, reaching down and gripping the fabric in his hands to pull it the rest of the way. The pants, the smaller pants, the socks, the shoes, the belts and equipment, they are all yanked from Leon’s person in a few fluid motions and thrown aside, leaving Leon’s body completely exposed. The only glaring difference from before is that his previously soft member is now semi-erect with arousal. X is immediately overcome by an excited hunger.

X doesn’t have a chance to do anything, though, because Leon’s breathing starts to crescendo out of control as his hands rush up to cover his face. X hovers over Leon’s body again with a worried grumble at the sudden display of discomfort. When Leon doesn’t respond, simply remaining frozen beneath him, X reaches out with one hand to gently touch Leon’s much smaller hands.

A single blue eye peeks out from between parting fingers, and X finds it wonderfully endearing. He forces himself to ease back to a softer purr as he coaxes Leon’s hands away. Leon is reluctant at first but eventually gives in, sliding his hands from his face to tightly grasp X’s fingers. The size disparity would be comical if X wasn’t so worried; X’s single hand easily encompasses both of Leon’s.

“I… I’m s-sorry, I just…” Leon chokes on his voice as he tries to stammer out his thoughts. X scans over his face, noting how red his cheeks are, how he keeps looking away instead of back up at X, how the mysterious not-fear has completely replaced all other emotion. “I-I don’t know, I just… I never thought I’d…” Leon lets out a noise that sounds like a combination of a laugh and a sob. After a few seconds of stuttering, he finally makes eye contact again. “This feels g-good… I… I want this… I’ve always wanted this… I-I want you to do this, X… I just… I still feel like I… shouldn’t want this? Like I’m not supposed to…” He trails off, breaking eye contact again as his face reddens even more.

X understands now what the not-fear is. It is an innate self-consciousness and shame. Certainly shame isn’t a beneficial adaptation for mating, though. He tries to think of what specifically might be the cause of that shame, and the only thing he can think of is that it’s his own fault for not being human. If Tyrants aren’t supposed to mate with humans, then surely that stupid rule applies in the other direction as well: humans aren’t supposed to mate with Tyrants. It makes sense that Leon’s conscience would be telling him that he shouldn’t want this, that he’s not supposed to do this.

But Leon said he does want it regardless. Perhaps he just hasn’t yet gotten over the shame of such blatant rule-breaking like X has. X feels a rising impatience; he wants to claim Leon so badly that it hurts. But he wants to enjoy the process, and he wants Leon to enjoy it too. After all, giving pleasure is surely an integral part of being a desirable mate. He’ll simply have to guide Leon through the apprehension before they proceed.

X closes his hand around both of Leon’s with a soft purr, then leans down to press his lips to the heated skin of Leon’s face. Leon lets out a heavy breath at the comforting ministrations. A few tears have leaked from his eyes, so X kisses them away. Once that is accomplished, X nuzzles the side of Leon’s face with his own, continuing to purr and offer nonverbal reassurance that Leon doesn’t have to be ashamed. Leon’s own words from the RPD echo in X’s memory, and he wishes more than ever that he could speak them aloud.

_You can let go. Let yourself have this._

After several minutes, X can feel Leon’s breath slowing again. When he pulls back to reexamine Leon’s face, he finds that the flustered redness of his skin has faded somewhat, that his gaze has grown more steady. The not-fear is still present, but less so than before, now buried beneath a returning awe. Leon pulls one of his hands from X’s and brings it back to X’s face, still fascinated by the inhuman strangeness of it.

“You… You’re a b-bioweapon, right? Umbrella made you like this? To k-kill people?”

X feels weird about how the questions are presented. It isn’t fearful or accusatory, more just curious in nature, and this seems like an odd time to bring it up. Nevertheless, he nods his confirmation.

“B-but… You’re so… p-patient? How are you so gentle? _Why_ are you so gentle? You could just… It’d be so easy for you to just-” Leon’s voice breaks, like he’s afraid of his own words.

So easy to what? Hurt him? Kill him? Ravage him without restraint?

X doesn’t like that at all.

Leon’s questions are valid though. For once X is thankful that he can’t speak, because if he could, Leon would expect an answer. But X doesn’t have an answer. He doesn’t know why he’s holding back despite the desperately aching need in his head and chest and loins. He doesn’t know why he’s formed this emotional attachment, why he cares about Leon’s own well-being and pleasure and approval so much. He doesn’t know how he’s being gentle, how he’s able to restrain his incredible strength to such a degree that he can soothe and comfort instead of kill and destroy. He doesn’t know why Umbrella failed to suppress these instincts from his supposedly flawless design. He doesn’t know why he’s so broken.

A new thought crosses his mind. What if… What if he isn’t exclusively broken? What if every Tyrant has this capacity to feel and think and want? To _disobey_?

Was everything Umbrella told him about the functioning of a Tyrant nothing more than intentional manipulation? Psychological programming to compliment the genetic programming?

Or was it all completely unintended? Does Umbrella even realize they’ve made this egregious error in their design?

X lets out a low hum as he lets go of Leon’s hand to instead pet his blonde hair again, trying to assure Leon that even if he doesn’t have all the answers, and even if it doesn’t all make sense right now, none of that changes the reality of his desire to protect and provide and pleasure better than anyone else ever could.

The corner of Leon’s lip twitches, like he wants to smile again but is still held back by apprehension. He closes his eyes and sighs. “X…”

X’s entire body aches at the sound of his new name on Leon’s tongue. But he can’t give in to that, not after he’s come so far to earn this, not when they’re so close. Just a little more patience, a little more comfort. X gently presses his lips to Leon’s neck with another purr, and Leon sighs again.

“You can keep going. Just… please keep being patient with me. This is… a lot.”

X is really starting to hate being patient. But he knows they’ll get to their destination all the same, and he knows the patient way will be better in the long term than the hasty and violent one. He may be a broken Tyrant, but he’s still a Tyrant in the end, and that means he remains self-controlled and intelligence-driven even under the most intense pressures. And this is certainly an intense pressure. Propensity for brutal and uncaring aggression aside, he doesn’t cave to recklessness.

X leans back and trails his hands down Leon’s body to his hips with a purr. One hand makes its way to Leon’s erection, and the human chirps a tiny noise of needy anticipation. Deeming this reaction to mean that he can proceed unimpeded, X glides his fingers along the sensitive member. He starts with slow, flighty movements. Leon’s response is gradual, beginning with slightly heavier breaths, then turning into nearly undetectable vocalizations, then culminating in quiet whining and needy squirming as he tries to push himself further into X’s grasp.

“ _X_ …”

Despite Leon’s clear desperation, X doesn’t increase his pace. If he is going to be patient, he’s at least going to try to enjoy it, and he finds that he likes how Leon squirms at his teasing, clearly wanting more but being too flustered to ask for it. The frustratingly slow pace continues for several minutes until Leon’s needy whines finally graduate to words.

“X, _please_ , I need… I need _more_...”

Satisfied that Leon is finally starting to give in to the stimulation, X grants him what he wants and begins to stroke him more enthusiastically. Leon gasps in response, and his hands slide desperately across the floor around him in search of something to cling to and ground himself with. His hands eventually locate the bloody lab coat. He pulls the white and red fabric to his chest and digs his fingers into it with a whimper.

“ _Oh my god_ …”

X can see the muscles in Leon’s thighs tensing and twitching beneath taut skin, Leon still clearly holding back. X picks up his intensity, determined to push Leon over that edge of frustrating restraint. Leon inevitably caves to the pleasurable sensations, and his legs fall lax at each side of X’s knees. X moves his free hand to one of Leon’s inner thighs, and Leon’s legs twitch violently like they’re trying hard not to reflexively snap shut. X simply massages up Leon’s leg with sturdy fingers, patiently coaxing him out of the tension. His hand gradually makes its way beneath Leon’s firm glutes and begins to knead the muscles into relaxation, and Leon has finally calmed down to the point that he doesn’t immediately pull away from the progressive contact.

X glances up at Leon and finds the male staring back at him. His blue eyes are trembling with a combination of pleasureful excitement and anxious apprehension, and his lips part with an occasional gasp when X delivers a particularly well-timed stroke.

Leon’s voice shakes from both the stimulation and the ever-present not-fear. “You… You can…” He closes his eyes and swallows loudly.

It’s clear enough what Leon wants. X begins to tenderly explore inward with his fingers, instinctively searching for a hole to penetrate, stopping once he find Leon’s tight entrance. Leon whimpers as X prods with a single digit. It’s so incredibly tight, and X realizes he’s going to have to relax Leon even further before he can even hope to fit inside the human’s tiny body to claim him. He doesn’t get a chance to do anything of the sort, though, because Leon immediately squeaks out a pitiful cry of discomfort the instant X starts to experimentally push further.

“W-wait!” X freezes and stares up at Leon’s face. He really doesn’t want to wait, but the panic and pain in Leon’s voice is too evident to simply ignore. When Leon sees that X has stopped at his request, he takes a few deep breaths, trying to calm himself down and stay coherent. “I-I didn’t think about… You c-can’t… I can’t take you dry. We don’t… We don’t have lube.”

X pulls his finger back out, and Leon’s body relaxes again. X never even considered such a need, but he supposes it makes sense. Leon is male, which means he isn’t self-lubricating. With an impatient grunt, X scans the immediate area, and the solution to the problem seems obvious enough. He reaches out and retrieves one of the many first aid sprays now scattered across the floor. It probably isn’t the most optimal lubrication in the world, but it’s certainly slick enough to eliminate the dryness and discomfort. The slight numbing effects of the medication might prove desirable, too.

“Oh. That’s… Good idea, X.”

X pulls his hand from Leon’s erection, then shakes the can vigorously before coating his fingers with the slick medication. He lowers the can to directly spray Leon’s entrance, and Leon flinches slightly at the sudden chill. With that problem solved, X sets the can aside and returns to his previous goal of stretching out Leon to take him. A lubricated finger slips inside once again, and this time Leon only gasps with surprise, not pain.

“Jesus Christ, that feels _weird_ ,” Leon mutters under his breath, and X grunts curiously. Leon quickly looks at him with a slightly panicked expression. “I-it’s good weird, though!” X makes a noise that almost sounds like a laugh to assure that he wasn’t offended by the comment, and Leon relaxes again.

X pushes further in, past the first knuckle, past the second knuckle, all the way to the base of his finger, and Leon whimpers at the completely unfamiliar sensation. It is an odd sensation for X as well. It’s so warm. So tight. It would feel so good around his own erection…

 _Patience_. _Self-control._

X slowly pulls his finger out, then pushes it back in, and Leon inhales deeply as he tries to adjust. X continues slowly repeating the motion as he waits for Leon to relax enough to take a second finger, and Leon’s noises gradually start to sound less uncertain and more enraptured. At some point Leon throws the lab coat over his face to hide the sounds he’s started making. He mumbles something into the fabric, but X can’t hear what he’s saying through the muffling.

Once X is certain Leon is relaxed enough to handle it, he slips in another digit, and Leon squirms with a quiet moan that sparks a flame in X’s abdomen. Leon mumbles something else, this time loud enough to be decipherable through the lab coat.

“ _X_ … It feels… _good_ …”

The way Leon says it makes it seem like it is _surprising_ to him. X feels a strange sense of accomplishment at that notion. Leon has shown him so many novel pleasures, clearly having some extent of past experience. X has no experience at all, his every act driven entirely by his innermost instincts and Leon’s vague prompting. He never would have thought that he could provide a novel pleasure in return, but that seems to be exactly what he’s doing right now.

Leon is handling the increase in girth incredibly well already, so X picks up his pace a little, pumping his two fingers in and out of Leon with a methodical rhythm. After some more muffled sounds, Leon finally pulls the lab coat from his face with a desperate gasp.

“ _Add m-more!_ ”

Leon’s body already feels much more relaxed and loose than when they started, and X is pleasantly surprised that humans are so adaptable despite being so fragile. He adds a third finger as per Leon’s request, and Leon chokes out a sob as his entire body trembles, X clearly having struck something sensitive.

“ _Oh g-god!_ ”

X growls again, his mind losing itself to a hazy lust. Leon’s blue eyes really are gorgeous, so bright and colorful and _human_. They’re staring up at X with wide excitement and clouded pleasure, and X immediately decides that he wants to see the look in those eyes when he claims Leon, when Leon achieves his release, when X achieves his own release inside of him.

X finds himself drawn in further by Leon’s prone form, his tight warmth, his cries of pleasure, his scent saturating the room, and most importantly, his relaxed and loosened receptiveness. As much as X savors watching Leon drift further and further into a comfortable submission that is driven by euphoric attention to newly awakened senses, he is certain that he will suffer physical pain if he has to wait any longer to do what his body is screaming for him to do, what his instincts are screaming for him to do, what the heated tension between his legs is screaming for him to do.

“ _P-please…_ ”

X perks up at the nearly inaudible vocalization. Leon has thrown the lab coat to the side and brought one of his hands to his erection, stroking it in rhythm with the thrusts of X’s fingers. His other hand, however, is reaching out desperately, clawing at the air, X sitting just out of reach between his legs.

“ _X… P-please…_ ” His voice is so tiny and vulnerable and shaky, like part of him wants to hold it back completely while another part of him wants to scream it.

X leans over Leon’s body until he is back in touching range, hopeful that Leon is asking for what he thinks he’s asking for. Leon’s outstretched hand immediately grips onto the leather of X’s trench coat, another heavy whine escaping his lips as X’s fingers hit his prostate.

“ _Please! I… Oh god… P-please…_ ”

X growls excitedly as Leon’s hand slides down to the buckle holding his trench coat closed to tug at the leather strap. It’s clear enough what Leon’s asking for, but X doesn’t make a move yet. The sound of Leon’s voice swimming in pleasure while also drowning in desperation fills X with a new heat that he doesn’t want to lose right away. Listening to Leon’s desperate pleading gives him a completely novel sense of power, perhaps satisfying him as a Tyrant more than anything else. Leon wants him, Leon _needs_ him, and whether or not Leon gets that is completely in X’s control.

There’s no doubt X is going to give Leon what he wants. X’s own body aches with a painful desperation to copulate as well, after all. He can feel the growing pressure against the crotch of his limiters. But he wants to hear more first, to fuel that heat. He wants Leon to say what he wants, to ask for it, to _beg_ for it, to shatter the not-fear that still lingers underneath his look of sheer euphoria and desire.

X aims his fingers against Leon’s prostate again, and the human chokes out another cry of needy desperation. “ _X! Fuck, I don’t care anymore, I just… I want it, p-please!_ ”

X aims for Leon’s sweet spot again with a growl of satisfaction, and Leon’s body practically convulses. Leon is certainly closer to getting what he’s begging for, but he’s still not being specific enough. X leans in further to stare intently into Leon’s eyes, communicating that he understands perfectly what Leon wants and he’s simply waiting for the right words to be spoken. Leon stares back with what seems to be flustered understanding as he continues to pull at the trench coat buckle.

“ _Please_ ,” Leon begs in a heady whisper. “ _I need… I need you to fuck me._ _Please. P-Please fuck me, X._ ”

That’s all X needed to hear. Leon whimpers and squirms impatiently at the emptiness left behind when X withdraws his fingers. X snorts with amusement; if he was patient enough to wait this long, then Leon can wait a few seconds. X works quickly to unbuckle the strap holding his trench coat closed and throws the coat open to reveal his leather undershirt and the similar buckles on his pants. He makes quick work of those buckles as well, finally freeing his own erection from the restrictive leather confines of the limiters.

Leon quietly squeaks at the sight, and X realizes that his erection is almost twice as thick as his three fingers were. Even with Leon so receptive and relaxed… this is probably going to be painful to some extent. X certainly doesn’t want to hurt Leon, but now that he’s tightly holding his own erection in his hand, he can’t keep holding back much longer. X can feel Leon’s eyes boring into him as he reaches over to retrieve the first aid spray, hastily emptying the rest of the contents onto himself in hopes of making this a little less unbearable for the human.

“Fuck… I forgot that you’re so… _b-big_ …” Leon’s voice cracks at the last word. He suddenly sounds much more coherent than he did a few seconds ago. He’s stopped pleasuring himself, both his hands now retracted and folded tightly together at his chest. “Is this… Are you, uh… Have you ever done this before?”

X shakes his head no as he throws the empty can aside.

Leon exhales a shaky laugh. “That’s reassuring… I figured as much…”

X moves over Leon’s prone body, placing his hands on each side of Leon’s head. He leans down to Leon’s neck with the best attempt at a soothing purr that he can manage through the heat and desperation and need. He grumbles when he detects the intensity of Leon’s pulse, the rapidity of his breaths, and the subtle fear in his scent.

Leon takes a deep breath as he raises a hand to the side of X’s face, turning X’s head to look into his eyes. “X… I… I want this, X. It’s fine. I just… Please, I want this.”

After a few more moments of silent eye contact, X huffs and leans back to reach for Leon’s hips. He reminds himself how adaptable Leon has proven to be already. It’ll be fine, and he wants this so much that he feels like he’ll perish if he doesn’t act now. As he grips Leon’s hips to angle them for penetration, however, he is met by a sharp gasp of pain, and he immediately lets go.

“ _Shit!_ ” Leon’s chest heaves as he runs his fingers through his own hair. “Sorry, it’s just… it’s my side…”

X grunts with frustration at the fact that holding Leon’s body up isn’t going to work thanks to those stupid plants attacking Leon. He can’t angle himself properly with Leon laying flat like this; his own body is simply too big. Perhaps he could flip Leon over onto his stomach… But X still wants to be able to look into his pretty blue eyes as they mate, and entering from behind certainly isn’t conducive to that. His gaze darts around for another solution to this novel problem, and he settles on the discarded lab coat. With another impatient huff, he snatches the coat and bunches it up into a ball, then carefully lifts Leon’s hips again to slip the bundle of fabric beneath him. Leon winces upon being lifted off the ground again, but the grimace on his face quickly fades once X lets go and leaves him to simply rest elevated on the coat.

Leon chuckles nervously. “Really? A goddamn sex pillow? You sure this is your first time, Mr. Ingenuity?” X doesn’t know what a “sex pillow” is, but if Leon is calling it a work of ingenuity, surely it is succeeding in achieving its intended purpose.

X lowers himself back over Leon with a purr, and the sides of the open trench coat bunch up on the ground on each side of them, closing them in like leather curtains. X’s heart pumps the viral blood through his veins much faster than before as he realizes that finally, after all this time, after all this patience, he can finally consummate Leon as _his_. He carefully aligns his hips with Leon’s, bringing the head of his erection to Leon’s waiting hole with a desperate desire for that warmth and tightness. Leon reaches underneath the open coat to wrap his arms around X’s body, and his fingers dig into X’s leather undershirt with nervous anticipation.

“Go ahead.”

With a low growl, X slowly pushes into Leon. The head disappears into his body, followed by the start of the shaft, and although the progression goes smoothly thanks to the lubrication of the first aid spray, Leon inhales sharply through his teeth at what is clearly an uncomfortable stretch. X moves incredibly slowly, carefully, wary of Leon’s fragility. As the girth of the penetrating member gradually increases, Leon grasps harder at X’s limiters with staggering breaths. A few involuntary tears stream down Leon’s face as X pushes the rest of the way in, stretching him to the point that he faintly cries out with an indecipherable mixture of pain and pleasure. X can feel the tightness of Leon’s insides attempting to accommodate the massive intrusion, and he lets out a low, steady groan at finally receiving some form of stimulation of his own.

_So warm…_

“W-wait,” Leon chokes out. “I… I can’t… Just… Just stay there for a minute. _Fuck…_ ”

X groans again, this time with agitation. He’s already been waiting for so long, and this feels so good, and his instincts are screaming, and he wants more than anything to just start pounding into the warm body encompassing him. But Leon is clearly struggling, so X doesn’t do that. He does as Leon cries for, remaining motionless, giving the small human time to adjust to his size. It’s the most difficult thing he’s ever done, and he swears the desperation for friction is starting to turn into physical discomfort. He shifts uncomfortably with another pained groan.

Leon starts to whisper under his breath. “ _Come on, Leon, you’ve made it this far…”_

X would find Leon’s miniature pep talk amusing if he wasn’t experiencing so much uncomfortable desperation at the moment. Leon stares up into X’s eyes, and he must note the pain there, because he forcefully steels himself to continue.

“…Alright, I… I think I can handle it.”

It’s probably a good thing that Leon choked back the apprehension and said that, because X doesn’t think he could have handled the pressure building inside his body any longer. He pulls out and thrusts back in with an aggressive grunt, and Leon shouts out in surprise at the sudden intensity X has already adopted in his movements. X continues to rut into Leon, and Leon makes a strange sound each time X bottoms out, something between a cry of pain and a moan of pleasure. X grunts and huffs and growls with each thrust, the primal noises fueled by his instincts and his desperation and the sheer euphoria that now overpowers all his self-control.

He’s tried to be gentle up until now, not wanting to scare or hurt Leon. But at this point that just isn’t possible anymore. The tightness and warmth and pleasure is simply too overwhelming. He couldn’t be gentle right now even if he wanted to, and he just hopes that Leon can take it.

“ _O-oh my g-god… Oh my fucking g-god…_ ” Leon struggles to choke out words. Such exclamations could be expressions of fear or pain or disbelief just as much as they could be exclamations of enjoyment. Indeed, there is a certain pain in the way Leon’s voice breaks and the way tears have resumed falling from the corners of his eyes, and he’s clearly overwhelmed by X’s size and intensity. But despite that, Leon still seems more ecstatic than anything else. He doesn’t try to pull himself away or push X out, he doesn’t cry out objections, he simply latches onto X for dear life, not wanting to lose his connection. He seems determined to overcome, the emerging enjoyment worth the accompanying discomfort. It encourages X to continue his unforgivingly rough pace without trepidation.

_He’s so warm… So warm… Warm…_

X has never felt anything so incredible. Even the pleasure he first experienced at the RPD pales in comparison to the warmth and intimacy of claiming Leon, every hard thrust sending another ripple of pleasure through his core. He stares down at Leon’s face beneath him and finds those eyes to be flooded with an unprecedented excitement as well as an intense shock.

Upon the establishment of that eye contact, Leon shifts to an expression that radiates a sudden manic energy. At least for now, the not-fear has been completely forgotten, lost in a daze of unrelenting stimulation. Leon’s cries of indeterminate meaning gradually shift into gasps and moans of broken sentences and X’s name. Whether he is still in pain or not is uncertain, but his emerging pleasure is becoming increasingly obvious.

X loves the way Leon is looking at him. He loves the sounds Leon is making for him. He loves the way Leon is holding onto him so desperately. Leon adjusted surprisingly quickly to X’s inherent brutality. In fact, the level to which Leon is reacting almost strikes X as deprived in some sense, like he’s been starved of intimacy and X is his first meal in years.

“ _Ah! Ah! Ah!”_ Leon gasps out meaningless noise as X continues hard and fast. X hits his prostate at just the right angle, and Leon’s entire body jolts. “ _X!_ ” he screams as he throws his head back.

Leon’s arms quickly shift from clinging to X’s torso to clinging to his shoulders. Leon pulls at X desperately, silently begging for a greater closeness. X growls as he gives in to Leon’s unspoken demands and lowers himself. He can feel Leon’s haphazard breaths against his skin thanks to the new proximity, and he feels like he’s drowning in his scent. It has grown increasingly sweet, increasingly potent, increasingly invigorating. Leon whimpers as he moves his thin fingers to grip the buckled limiters strapped around X’s neck.

“ _X… Don’t stop… Please don’t stop… It feels good… Fuck, it really does feel good…_ ” He practically cries the words as more overwhelmed tears stream down his face. Again, his word choice and intonation makes it seem as though he is surprised by the fact that this experience is so pleasurable, and X still likes that a lot.

X experiences a rush of possessiveness at the sight and sound of Leon crying and begging for more beneath him. He lowers his face further to kiss Leon again, and Leon kisses back with a frenzied roughness, whimpering and moaning and gasping and crying into X’s lips. It is different from the previous kisses, the ones that were so uncertain and careful and experimentative. This time it is completely feral, echoing a mutual hunger that is exacerbated by every ardent touch of lips and tongues and hands and hips.

X feels all his possessiveness and protectiveness and pleasure and hunger concentrating into some unknown emotional deluge that overtakes his entire body. He suddenly can’t get close enough to Leon no matter what he does. He pushes himself deeper, kisses harder. His arms slide between Leon’s back and the cold floor in order to lift Leon’s small body closer to his own, wishing that he could better feel the small human’s heat against his chest through the leather undershirt. Although X is unable to understand it, Leon’s closeness fuels something more than just the bodily pleasures he expected to experience from this. This additional intangible sensation – this _bond_ – is new and unexplainable and transcendent.

Leon’s legs move to hook around X’s own as Leon’s arms simultaneously move back down to wrap around X’s broad torso, giving him the leverage he needs to passionately rock his hips into X’s thrusts. If there’s any pain inflicted onto Leon’s injured side from the motion, Leon clearly doesn’t care. Perhaps any pain at this point is masked by the endorphins surely saturating his bloodstream. Regardless, his pleasure continues to fuel more desperate sounds and movements, and his small body starts to quiver harder with approaching release.

Leon mutters incoherently against X’s lips, apparently unable to decide if he wants to speak or keep kissing before finally settling on trying to do both simultaneously. “ _Fuck… X… Please… I’m so close… Please, X, I’m so fucking close…_ ”

The pleading sends X’s mind reeling. He strategically angles his hips to ensure that every thrust hits Leon’s sweet spot, determined to push Leon over that edge. Leon’s noises and movements escalate in response, growing in intensity and desperation until he simply can’t sustain the kissing anymore and his head falls back. X moves his lips to Leon’s neck instead, and Leon shudders violently.

A few seconds more of hungrily kissing at Leon’s skin is all it takes to reach finality. Leon arches up into X’s body with a shaking moan as he comes untouched. He spills against his own toned stomach and X’s leather undershirt, and X immediately pulls his head back to take in the sight. He savors the way in which Leon’s small form trembles beneath him, but even better is the look of astonished euphoria glowing in Leon’s widened eyes. Several smaller moans slip from Leon’s lips as he finishes, falling in volume until he goes completely limp beneath X.

Despite his sudden exhaustion, Leon’s body continues to rock back and forth across the floor from the force of X’s thrusts. Leon stares up with the haze of afterglow, not even seeming to care that X is still overstimulating him so roughly. He smiles, but this time it is neither crazed with mania nor restrained with apprehension and shame. It is gentle and adoring and _genuine_. Considering how dazed he looks beneath that smile, he might not even realize he’s doing it. X feels himself losing the last of his control as he stares back into Leon’s distant eyes, overwhelmed by a powerful possessiveness and protectiveness and passionate adoration. He’s close too; he can feel the urgent heat building in his core.

_So warm…_

Leon is so small, so fragile, so vulnerable, so gorgeous. X wants this small, fragile, vulnerable, gorgeous human more than anything. He needs this human. _His_ human.

 _His Leon_.

X lowers his forehead to rest on the hard floor next to Leon’s head. The position inadvertently knocks off his hat, but he doesn’t have the mind to care at the moment. With a low groan, he finally achieves his own release and spills deep into Leon’s body. He moves more slowly as he comes, mindful of the manner in which Leon drew out his orgasm at the RPD with gentle strokes rather than forceful ones. It’s still just as effective as before, and he shakes as the orgasmic pleasure washes over his entire body and lingers there, leaving him feeling a warmth and relief and calm too powerful for him to fully comprehend. X continues for a while, coaxing himself empty, and Leon sighs heavily at X’s surprisingly gentle and passionate movements and the warmth spilling into him.

“ _…X…_ ”

X’s motions gradually settle into stillness, the only remaining movement coming from his heated breaths. He turns his head to look at Leon, and Leon moves a shaking hand to X’s face with a softness in his gaze that rivals the softness in his voice. X melts into the touch with a purr and pulls Leon’s body into a tighter embrace, overwhelmed by that strange sensation that he is unable to consciously focus on. His thoughts are normally so coherent and rational, but right now they are hopelessly scattered and obscured by afterglow.

_Good. Warm. Belonging. Home._

Leon rests his head against the crook of X’s neck. “I…” He pushes deeper into X’s hold like he wants to curl in on himself. “That was…”

X moves a hand to Leon’s hair and runs his fingers through the soft blonde strands with a gentle purr, urging Leon to continue.

“… _Amazing_.”

His voice sounds satisfied and awestruck and fulfilled, but it also sounds… quietly defeated. X doesn’t understand why. He pulls Leon closer with a reassuring purr, not sure what he should do.

“You’re so warm, X… I don’t want to let go…”

Quieter. He almost sounds afraid.

“I’ve never…”

A withdrawn sniffle. His voice has grown so quiet that X can barely hear it.

“Nobody else has ever made me come before.”

His body gives a small shudder, and X realizes he’s silently crying. Normally X would feel some kind of pride at the revelation Leon just declared, but he can’t feel anything other than a sudden worry over Leon’s subsequent emotional distress.

“Why wouldn’t… Why couldn’t I just… Why didn’t I let myself have this? Why… Why am I _still_ so afraid to let myself have this? You’re so warm. You’re so, so warm. I want that. I want that so much. I’ve been looking for that for so long. Why am I so afraid to admit that I’ve found it?” Another shudder accompanied by a barely audible sob. “It’s right here… Why is it so hard to just… take it…”

X still isn’t entirely sure what Leon is talking about. If this is about the shame Leon feels, then perhaps X was wrong about that shame revolving around his inhumanity. Leon says he’s been looking for this for a long time, but he only met X a day ago.

Determined to comfort Leon in any way he can, X brings a hand to Leon’s jaw and forces Leon to look at him. Leon stares with trembling eyes. His face is wet with tears. Sure enough, he radiates the not-fear once again. Are all humans this emotional? X supposes it isn’t important. Leon is the only human that matters, after all. X closes his eyes and presses their foreheads together with a soothing purr, hoping for even the smallest positive response.

“It doesn’t bother you at all, does it?”

X opens his eyes again. What could be bothering Leon that could also bother him? He grunts inquisitively.

Leon chokes out a forced laugh that gets caught in another sob. “God, you didn’t even know what kissing and masturbating are. Of course you wouldn’t think about… Why would… Why would you even care that I’m another guy? I guess it’s kind of stupid to care about something like that, isn’t it? I bet you never even thought about it. It doesn’t matter to you, does it? I could be anything and it wouldn’t matter, would it?” He sighs. “Why can’t I just be like that too?”

Wait, so Leon feels ashamed because… he’s a male? And X is also a male? And Leon prefers that?

That’s… a problem?

Why does that bother Leon so much? Is it normal for humans to be bothered by that? Is it because two males can’t breed? Who cares as long as it feels good? His instincts sure didn’t care.

Human problems are so needlessly contrived.

Still, it doesn’t matter what X thinks about this. Whether or not X sees it as an issue, that doesn’t change the fact that Leon _does_ see it as an issue. X wishes he could tell Leon his thoughts on the matter, but he can’t, so he’ll have to rely on nonverbal comfort instead and hope that Leon can get over the issue on his own. He offers a much deeper purr and continues to stroke Leon’s hair, trying to communicate that Leon is right about this not being important to him and that Leon shouldn’t find it important either.

The faintest smile peaks through Leon’s tears. “I… I guess this is a step though, isn’t it? I mean, I never would have let myself do something like this… a year ago. A month ago. A day ago, even. You… You pushed me to take a step I didn’t think I’d ever take. Hell, you made me acknowledge that it was a step I wanted to take in the first place. Well, okay, maybe it wasn’t a step. This was a goddamn leap, wasn’t it?” He chuckles under his breath. “You really are so warm, X. I kind of… I kind of want you to keep pushing me?”

That’s exactly what X wants, too. He doesn’t just want to protect and provide and pleasure, he wants Leon to feel happy. He wants Leon to feel… loved.

Love. It is a word X has never used before, but he is vaguely aware of its definition. A deep affection. Certainly that’s the word for the bond that he now feels. It is a new feeling. A good feeling. A very, very good feeling. Yes, a mate is certainly supposed to be protected and provided for and pleasured and _loved_. And he wants to help Leon figure out how to love back without these unnecessary human convictions. X gives a satisfied hum.

“You want to keep pushing me too, don't you?”

X nods. Leon is surprisingly good at reading him even without words, and he’s thankful for that. Leon smiles again before timidly touching his lips to X’s. This kiss isn’t hungry and demanding like before, but rather soft, perhaps appreciative, more intended to portray a message than to drink in pleasure and satiate desperation. X cherishes it.

“Thank you, X.”

Leon is still the only person who has ever thanked X for anything. It felt weird the first time it happened back at the RPD.

This time it feels perfectly right.


End file.
